Have You Talked to Your Doctor about Insulin?

A 'Thank You' goes out to David Mendosa for his blog on December 3, which gave me a start for my own blog about people with type 2 diabetes giving insulin a fair consideration. Too many refuse to even consider insulin and as a result do not effectively manage their diabetes.

Yes, too many people with type 2 diabetes never consider insulin as the first line of treatment, but only as the last line of diabetes treatment when all else fails. The sad part of this is that they are encouraged by doctors to only use oral medications with many unpleasant side effects.

Many people with type 2 diabetes are not willing to give up their poor eating habits and as a result, the oral medications are not able to manage diabetes. Diabetes then becomes progressive and steadily becomes worse. The doctors keep adding one oral medication after another to help manage diabetes – to no avail. It is what the doctors want because they have an unhealthy fear of insulin causing a low (hypoglycemia).

That is the reason doctors keep changing and/or stacking one oral medication on top of another. They even use the threat of insulin to get you to change your eating habits and manage your diabetes more effectively. But, you are so afraid of insulin that you will not even consider it. For some it could be the fear of needles and for others it is the desire to stay on pills. For others, the insulin myths have a huge effect in scaring them away from great diabetes management.

David has some good questions to ask your doctor about insulin and I agree with most of them. The last two may get negative responses from your insurance company, Medicare will not authorize number six in his list, and even people with type 1 are denied access when they should have CGMs.

If you are a person newly diagnosed, be aware that most endocrinologists will work with you on insulin and often will prescribe insulin to help you manage diabetes effectively to give your pancreas time to recover from the strain you have given it before diagnosis.

Know that by using a low carb/high fat meal plan is also good for you and will make diabetes easier to manage and will not require a lot of insulin. I have written about making insulin the first choice for treatment of type 2 diabetes. I have also written about what to do when first diagnosed.