Diabetes Education Online – Diabetes Teaching Center at the University of California, San Francisco – is an excellent resource for persons with Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes.
The following are excerpts from Insulin Basics of Diabetes Education Online:
Natural insulin (i.e. insulin released from your pancreas) keeps your blood sugar in a very narrow range. Overnight and between meals, the normal, non-diabetic blood sugar ranges between 60-100mg/dl and 140 mg/dl or less after meals and snacks.
When you have type 1 diabetes, you will need to start insulin therapy because you no longer make your own insulin. The insulin therapy tries to mimic natural or non-diabetic insulin secretion. There are two components of insulin therapy – [Basal Insulin Replacement Therapy and Bolus Insulin Replacement]
Basal Replacement:
- Controls glucose overnight and between meals by keeping fat in fat tissue and curbing glucose production from the liver.
- Provides a low, continuous level of insulin.
- Can be a long-acting insulin, which you inject once or twice daily such as the insulin analogs, insulin glargine, insulin detemir and NPH.
- Or can be a rapid-acting insulin continuously infused under the skin, if you are using an insulin pump.
- Represents about 50% or half of the body’s daily insulin requirements.
Bolus insulin replacement
There are two kinds of bolus replacement:
- Mealtime Bolus – to cover the carbohydrate in the meal or snack.
- High Blood Sugar Correction Bolus – provides extra insulin to return the blood sugar back to the target level when your blood sugar is too high.
- Bolus Insulin is usually provided by a rapid-acting insulin analogs, such as insulin aspart, insulin Lyspro, and insulin glulisine or Regular insulin.
- Represents about 10% to 20% of the daily insulin requirement at each meal, or about 50% of the body’s daily insulin needs.
