Diabetes practices and regimens can vary between countries, hospitals / clinics, & specialists.  Therefore what may be encouraged in one setting may not be so recommended in another.  This insulin tutorial is not meant to provide a didactic (regimented / fixed) plan for using insulin.  Rather the tutorial intends to show some ways of doing things, and provide some explanations as to why things may be done in a certain way.  Furthermore it is hoped that this tutorial may encourage people to think a bit more about what insulin regimens are possible, & how they might be improved and / or tailored for an individual.  In all this remember that people's mileage may vary - so what works for one person may not be appropriate for someone else.  Therefore, as with all medical information on the Web, it is important that you consult your doctor or diabetes specialist before considering acting on any of the information discussed in this tutorial.


Insulin Tutorial 1-Summary
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What have we learnt so far?


You will be pleased to hear that you have finished Section 1 of this tutorial - and are now over one third of the way through the material which is currently available here!

So far, we have overviewed two of the main classes of insulin preparations:

Regular insulin and Long-acting insulin

We have been able to simulate various example regimens which make use of these two types of insulin.

We have learnt why a single once daily injection of long-acting insulin would not offer ideal metabolic control - and have seen instead how by combining injections of regular insulin with long-acting insulin it is possible to achieve better control.

We have also learnt about two important modes of insulin management - conventional insulin therapy and intensive conventional insulin therapy.

We have seen how premixed (biphasic) insulin formulations can be used to provide conventional insulin therapy, and have also learnt a bit about mixing insulin preparations in the syringe.

We have also discovered some of the advantages of two (or more) injections per day, as well as how some of the basal-bolus (booster) intensive conventional insulin regimens operate.

Finally we have learnt a bit about the dawn phenomenon, and how to find out if we might be going 'hypo' overnight.

In the next lesson (Section 2) we will learn more about actually choosing the right insulin dose.


Diabetes Insulin Tutorial
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The information presented at this site is for general use only and is not intended to provide personal medical advice or substitute for the advice of your doctor or diabetes specialist. If you have any questions about any of the information presented here, concerns about individual health matters or the management of your diabetes, please consult your doctor or diabetes specialist
The material in this on-line Diabetes / Insulin Tutorial has been drawn from a number of different sources.
However the original Web-based version can be found at the AIDA Website at: http://www.2aida.org/tutorial.

AIDA diabetes software simulator program of glucose-insulin interaction