Side effects of insulin

Insulin is a very important hormone secreted by our body. It is also the only hormone in our body that can lower blood sugar. Many diabetic patients will inject insulin on a regular basis. Now the incidence of diabetes is already very high, especially among men and middle-aged and elderly people. Patients with severe diabetes need to inject insulin to control blood sugar, but insulin still has many side effects.

Since the advent of insulin, it has achieved very good results in the treatment of diabetes and has saved the lives of many patients. It can lower patients' blood sugar, which is the most important thing for diabetic patients, but are you aware of the side effects of insulin?

1. Pain

Patients who have never injected insulin may become nervous and feel weak in their calves when they think of the shiny needle. Does injecting insulin cause pain? The answer is yes. However, if you ask one hundred patients who have injected insulin, I am afraid that ninety-nine of them will tell you: the pain of injecting insulin is very mild! Since the insulin needle is much smaller than other injection needles, under normal circumstances, the pain is much milder than other drug injections or vaccinations. Of course, there are always unexpected events. If the pain is particularly obvious, it may be caused by the needle hitting the subcutaneous nerve when inserting the needle. At this time, if the pain is still bearable, you can quickly complete the injection and remove the needle; if the pain is unbearable, you should change the site and inject again. Generally speaking, insulin is injected subcutaneously in the abdomen, which causes minimal pain, and has stable absorption and easy injection.

2. Hypoglycemia

Hypoglycemia is indeed terrible, especially asymptomatic hypoglycemia, which may directly cause the patient to fall into a coma without any warning. However, people with type 2 diabetes are less likely to experience severe hypoglycemia. Of course, this does not mean that patients do not need to know how to prevent and deal with the occurrence of hypoglycemia. Only by being prepared can you avoid trouble. It is very common for diabetic patients treated with insulin to experience hypoglycemia, especially before meals and at night. However, hypoglycemia caused by insulin treatment in patients with type 2 diabetes is often mild and less harmful. Most cases can be prevented or avoided by having snacks between meals or before bedtime.

3. Fat Pad

The formation of fat pads is due to long-term injection of insulin in the same area, which stimulates the proliferation of subcutaneous fat. The presence of this fat pad will affect local insulin absorption. The formation of fat pads can be avoided, and the prevention measures are very simple - patients only need to change the injection site regularly.

4. Insulin Antibodies

In the past, some diabetic patients would produce insulin antibodies in their bodies after several months of insulin treatment, which would reduce insulin activity, affect efficacy, and lead to a gradual increase in insulin dosage. The root cause may be related to certain impurities in insulin preparations. The solution is to switch to high-purity human insulin preparations. With the development of science and technology, the current clinical applications of animal insulin, human insulin, and human insulin analogs rarely or almost never produce insulin antibodies.

5. Weight Gain

After using insulin continuously for a period of time, many patients with type 2 diabetes find that their weight often increases as their blood sugar is controlled. Most patients often put all the blame on the insulin and even stop using insulin. We should have a clear understanding of this. It is true that after blood sugar is controlled by using insulin, the amount of glucose lost in the urine is reduced, which is equivalent to reducing calorie loss to a certain extent, leading to a certain degree of weight gain, which is understandable. However, weight gain is not entirely caused by insulin itself. If patients control their diet reasonably and strengthen physical exercise on the basis of taking insulin to achieve a balance between calorie intake and expenditure, will their weight still increase? Weight gain after taking insulin can generally be controlled through combination medication (metformin, acarbose, etc.), diet control, exercise regulation, etc., so patients do not need to worry too much about it.

Insulin is a double-edged sword, with both advantages and disadvantages. Although it is very effective in treating diabetes, it also brings some obvious side effects. We must be aware of the side effects of insulin when using it, but in order to treat the disease, many people can tolerate these side effects. The current high incidence of diabetes can also sound the alarm for our daily lives.