What are the side effects of insulin shots?

What is the most serious side effect of insulin?

Hypoglycemia is the most common and serious side effect of insulin, occurring in approximately 16% of type 1 and 10% of type II diabetic patients (the incidence varies greatly depending on the populations studied, types of insulin therapy, etc).

What are the long term effects of injecting insulin?

Some studies have shown that the use of insulin is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events, cancer and all-cause mortality in comparison with other glucose-lowering therapies.

What is the downside of taking insulin?

The downside of insulin therapy is the need to increase the dose and the regimen complexity with time, the increase in severe hypoglycemia, and the potential increase in mortality as well as the potential increased risk for specific cancers.

How does taking insulin make you feel?

Taking insulin can also make you feel better.

This is because keeping blood glucose levels in your target range gives you more energy to live your life as you want. “I'm much happier with where I'm at than where I was. Just the fact that I generally feel better, more active, more aware”.

Insulin Side Effects

Can you get off of insulin once you start?

If you still feel strongly about trying to get off insulin, talk to the doctor managing your diabetes about trying to slowly taper off insulin, going down one or two units a day every week or so. Don't try this without talking with your doctor; he or she would need to monitor your sugars carefully during the process.

Is 10 units of insulin a lot?

Long-acting (basal) insulin.

Each has its own dosage. Depending on the type, you might start with 10 units a day. Or your doctor may base the first dose on your weight, based on about 0.2 units for every 2.2 pounds. This may be less than you need, but it's a good starting point.

Is insulin harmful to kidneys?

In healthy subjects, insulin has little or no effect on renal hemodynamics, glomerular filtration rate, or permeability to albumin. In patients with noninsulin-dependent diabetes, hyperinsulinemia selectively increases urinary albumin excretion.

Does insulin damage your body?

Because of the largely unrestricted insulin signaling, hyperinsulinemia increases the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease and decreases health span and life expectancy. In epidemiological studies, high-dose insulin therapy is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Can insulin do more harm than good?

A new study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that for older patients with type 2 diabetes, medications to lower blood sugar levels may “do more harm than good.”

What are the two most significant side effects of insulin?

Does insulin make you tired and sleepy?

Does insulin make you tired? If your insulin is dosed correctly, it should not make you tired. However, if you take more than is needed and experience hypoglycemia, you will most likely feel tired.

Does insulin make you feel sick?

Hypoglycemia can occur when a person takes too much insulin or does not eat enough food. It can lead to serious complications, including insulin shock. Both hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia can make a person feel nauseated.

How much insulin should I take if my blood sugar is 400?

Theoretically, to reduce 400 mg/dL blood sugar to about 100 mg/dL, you would need at least 10 units of insulin. However, depending on your weight and other factors, a higher dose of insulin is almost always required.

Can insulin damage your liver?

While insulin itself is not hepatotoxic and has not been linked to serum enzyme elevations or instances of clinically apparent liver injury, high doses including overdoses of insulin and glucose can result in hepatic glycogenosis and serum aminotransferase elevations.

Does insulin make you poop?

It helps lower your blood glucose and makes your body more sensitive to insulin, but it can also cause nausea and diarrhea when you first start taking it or raise the dose. Those side effects usually go away in a few weeks. Diarrhea is a possible side effect of other diabetes drugs, too, including: Acarbose (Precose)

At what sugar level is insulin required?

Insulin therapy will often need to be started if the initial fasting plasma glucose is greater than 250 or the HbA1c is greater than 10%.

Where should you not inject insulin?

Do not inject near joints, the groin area, the navel, the middle of the abdomen, or scar tissue. You will also need to rotate, or switch, your injection sites. If you use the same injection site over and over again, you may develop hardened areas under your skin that keep the insulin from working properly.

Is insulin better than metformin?

Most experts agree that insulin is the best treatment for pregnant women with diabetes. Metformin is excreted into breast milk and can therefore be transferred to the nursing infant. Nursing mothers should not use metformin.

Does insulin make you pee more?

"When diabetes raises your blood sugar, your body may not be able to bring all of the glucose back in when it passes through your kidneys. Instead, your body will try to get rid of the excess by making more urine," Johnson explained.

What are the signs of kidney failure in diabetics?

How much insulin should I take for 500 blood sugar?

Thus: 500 ÷ total daily dose = the number of grams of carbs covered by 1 unit of rapid-acting insulin. If your total daily dose was 50, this would give you the following calculation: 500 ÷ 50 = 10. This would mean that 10 grams of carbs would require 1 unit of insulin, giving you the ratio of 1:10.

What is the average lifespan of a person with type 2 diabetes?

For type 2 diabetes, the average patient was 65.4 years old and had a life expectancy from now of 18.6 years. In comparison, patients the same age without diabetes were expected to live 20.3 years from now.