Is insulin pump better than multiple daily injections? 5 things you should know before switching from pens to an insulin pump.
Are you thinking of switching from multiple daily injections or pants to an insulin pump i switched between these two for a few times and in this video i will share with you five things that i wish i had known before switching to an insulin pump is an insulin pump better than multiple daily injections you will find out right here right now let’s go hey welcome
Back to my channel if you’re new here my name is tom i’ve been type 1 diabetic for over 30 years and on this channel i help you navigate your diabetes journey at the time when i was diagnosed with type 1 the only way to treat diabetes were the old-school really big needles there were no insulin pens no insulin pumps we did not even have a glucometer we started
Really old school with absolutely no technology i switched to insulin pens when i was eight years old and that made things a lot easier but my blood sugars when i was a teenager were like a roller coaster a lot of up and downs so that’s why my parents and i decided to try out an insulin pump when i was 12 years old at that time it was absolutely no technology
And not a lot of doctors had experience with it but we found one who was willing to put me on a pump the clear pros of an insulin pump are things like you don’t have to step a needle in your body four times a day anymore you are much more flexible with meals because you can make little corrections all the time 0.1 unit here 0.3 units there you can have different
Basal rates for different times a day to deal with things like donor phenomena and you can just automate so many things the obvious cons are that an insulin pump is super expensive when it’s not covered by your insurance and you will have to have it attached to your body pretty much 24 7 for the rest of your life so you will always have to find a spot where to
Put the insulin pump on your body so that it’s comfortable for you and you can live the full life so these pros and cons are quite obvious but in this video i want to talk about things that are not so obvious and that i only found out having used insulin pump for 20 years days and nights with only a few little breaks and number one is privacy although it’s 2020
And the technology has been developing so fast the insulin pumps still look very medical on your body if you use omnipot you will be living with this big bump on your body 24 7. on the other hand if you use medtronic or t slim which are the ones that i used lately they have this tubing which is quite hard to hide and also get stuck on things especially if you
Are the pump in a pocket or on the belt like me and most of the people will really notice that you have the pump on your body and from my experience half of the people who notice it will either stare at it or will start asking you questions and this bothered me a lot especially when i was younger i got more comfortable over time but it still gets annoying when
You have to respond to the same question all over again by the way the t slim insulin pump which i wear right now is great but if someone from the tandem company is listening could you please guys do something with this huge connector for tubing i mean when i wear my pump on the belt or in my pocket it just looks so medical by the way if someone who has t-slim
Is watching this video let me know if you found a way how to hide this connector for tubing under your clothes when your pump is in your pocket now on the other hand once you get used to an insulin pump it’s so easy to bols when your pump is in your pocket or under your clothes and you don’t have to pull the injections and take your bottles in front of uh many
People when you go for lunch or dinner for example so from that perspective pump can be much more discrete and you can also bollas on the go which i don’t think you can do with insulin pens observation number two it is so much easier to get into a dka when you have an insulin pump compared to pans and that’s because insulin pump is using the same insulin for
Bolus and basal and this insulin is usually a rapid acting insulin that peaks in one to two hours and that only lasts for three to five hours so as a pump user you need to have this rapid acting insulin circulating in your body pretty much all the time if something happens with your canola or with the pump you need to be able to find an alternative solution
Pretty fast because the insulin you have on board will be gone within three hours if you use multiple daily injections you typically don’t have this problem because your long lasting insulin usually lasts for about 24 hours so you always have some insulin on board and the risk of getting into dka is much lower and this is quite important because as a pump user
I don’t always feel like carrying a spare infusion set on me but when something happens i need to be ready to act quite fast and just go home and get that canola changed observation number three the thing that i hate probably the most about insulin pump is that it gives me a really hard time when i decide to do a workout or just go for a walk spontaneously
Because i have this rapid acting insulin on board all the time when i start moving the insulin starts working much more effectively and my blood sugar just plummets right away and it’s very very fast a good way to deal with it is to reduce my basal rate well in advance of the activity but had i not done it the only way for me to avoid a hypo is to load myself
With some quick carbs from my experience the long-lasting insulin that you take in an insulin pan does not get impacted so much by the physical activity and you don’t drop so much and so fast number four the amount of supplies that i need for my insulin pump is huge so for one month i need a pack of cartridges like this one i also need a pack of infusion sets
Like this one i also need some needles and injections to fill the cartridges you know if you’re a metronic user you also need batteries and you use quite a lot of these batteries and of course you need a spare pump in case of your pump stops working and in case the spare pump stops working you also need some additional injections that you can use in the worst
Case scenario so really the amount of supplies that you need to take with you when you travel is huge number five when you start with an insulin pump you will be overwhelmed you need to learn how to fill your cartridge you need to learn how to do your infusion set you need to remember to change your batteries you need to figure out the pump settings the pump
Interfaces you need to tune in your bazel and polos and you also need to think about million other things but once you get all that tuned in you will have so much more flexibility and so much more control over your diabetes management my personal favorite two insulin pump functionalities are temporary basal rates and super bowls i mean super bowls is not an
Official function but i use it a lot temporary basal rates allow you to reduce or increase your basal for a set period of time you can be anywhere between 0 and two hundred percent and i use this every day any kind of physical activity or when i’m sick i always use temporary basal rates and that really helps me keep my blood sugar in the range no matter what i
Do super bowlers allows me to imitate pre-balloons and i do it anytime when i don’t have time to pre-bolus and i want to avoid that post-meal blood sugar spike how i do it is i basically increase my balance by the amount of insulin i would take in the next two hours in the form of basal rate and then i decreased this basal rate that i used in the bonus to zero
To compensate for that so in total i take this same amount of insulin i just have this insulin in my body and on board much earlier which kind of imitates the pre-balance i explain all this in detail in another video and i will link it here for you and in the description below so that you can check it out the new pump i have t slim x2 has also a functionality
Called bazel iq and what this does is that allows the pump to communicate with your cgm sensor and create a closed loop adjusting your insulin dosage depending on your blood sugar levels so it will automatically reduce your insulin dosage when you’re going low and automatically increase your insulin dosage when you’re getting too high this functionality is not
Yet available in my country so i haven’t had a chance to test it but i’m really looking forward to test this one and i’m sure this will become my favorite functionality because being able to be connected to a closed loop that’s officially licensed and approved by the manufacturer is a big deal and i so much looking forward to this and i’m sure this will take
A lot of stress of my diabetes management so would i recommend you to switch to insulin pump you know everyone is different and if you prefer freedom and you are able to dial in your blood sugar levels without using uh insulin pump you absolutely don’t have to do that but i think that the fact that i’ve never been off the insulin pump since i first tried it for
More than a few weeks kind of speaks for itself although i had a few complaints about insulin pumps in this video i think i wouldn’t be able to keep my blood sugar in range and keep my hba1c at around 6 without using an insulin pump so it’s probably my second best tool in diabetes management toolbox after a cgm by the way i have a whole youtube playlist about
Freestyle libre which is the cgm i use if you want to watch it click on the video that you can see on the screen now thank you very much for watching and i will see you in the next type of talks video ciao
Transcribed from video
Watch This Before Switching to Insulin Pump from Multiple Daily Injections (MDI) By Type One TalksliveBroadcastDetails{isLiveNowfalsestartTimestamp2020-09-07T114528+0000endTimestamp2020-09-07T115736+0000}