In the clinic today, an old lady asked me whether I have diabetes lacking any substance? How should it be supplemented?
It is estimated that many diabetic patients will have the doubts of old ladies. In order to let everyone have a deeper understanding and understanding of diabetes, I will share my personal views today. However, considering the length of the content, I hope everyone can read it carefully. I believe you will definitely gain a lot.
1. What is lacking in the body can cause diabetes?
Everyone may think that they are very familiar with diabetes, but when it comes to understanding, it is estimated that many patients cannot be called it!
Before answering this question, let's first understand the definition of diabetes. From a professional point of view, diabetes is a metabolic disease caused by absolute or relative insufficient secretion of insulin and impaired insulin utilization.
Maybe so much, everyone still doesn't know much about diabetes. In fact, to put it plainly, the essence of diabetes is insulin. It can be considered that diabetic patients lack insulin, and insulin is the only substance in the body that lowers blood sugar. If the human body lacks it, the blood sugar must be high.
Clinically, diabetes can be divided into two major categories, namely type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes:
type 1 diabetes which is essentially insulin-deficient: its essenceIn other words, the human body cannot secrete enough insulin, and naturally it cannot maintain normal blood sugar levels. The cause of this type of diabetes may be that the pancreatic cells that secrete insulin have congenital or acquired defects, so their function declines. The incidence of this type of diabetes is relatively low, mainly in young people, and their symptoms of polydipsia, polyuria, polyphagia, and weight loss are more obvious.
Type 2 diabetes: This type of diabetes is the most common type, which occurs mainly in adults and is relatively rare in young people. The essence of type 2 diabetes is relatively insufficient insulin secretion or (and) insulin resistance . Unlike type 1 diabetes, the "three more and one less" symptoms of type 2 diabetes are not obvious. Among patients with type 2 diabetes, many are overweight. Compared with normal people, obese people have insulin resistance.
Maybe you don’t understand. Diabetes is caused by insufficient insulin secretion and insulin resistance. What is going on? Don't worry, everyone, I'll talk about it in detail.
For insulin to work in the human body, it must bind to the insulin receptor . The relationship between insulin and insulin receptor, we can assume that there are two keys on a door, and only two keys can open the door at the same time to open the door, otherwise the door cannot be opened.
The relative lack of insulin secretion mentioned above mainly refers to the existence of insulin resistance in such people. The same amount of insulin as before is definitely unable to control blood sugar. In order to maintain normal blood sugar, the human body has to secrete more insulin, but due to the limited capacity of pancreatic islet cells , there may be relatively insufficient insulin secretion.
For patients with type 2 diabetes,They are generally obese, and naturally there is also insulin resistance. If they can lose 10 to 20 pounds, their blood sugar will definitely be easier to control.
Above all, diabetes is mainly a direct or indirect lack of insulin in the body.
2. Since diabetes is due to lack of insulin, how should it be supplemented?
I don’t know if you have ever thought about a problem. In reality, many diabetic patients need insulin. Why do they choose to inject insulin under the skin instead of oral?
biological macromolecules
In fact, this question was answered as early as when studying high school biology . We all know that the essence of insulin is a protein, which is a biological macromolecule, so it cannot be directly absorbed by the body through the gastrointestinal tract.
After oral administration of insulin, it will enter the human body and be converted into small molecules of amino acids. In order for insulin to play a role in lowering blood sugar, it must ensure structural integrity. Therefore, oral insulin cannot reduce blood sugar.
We all know that diabetes can be controlled by oral medications in the early stages of blood sugar, , but as the disease progresses, the function of pancreatic islet cells declines, and the amount of naturally secreted insulin also shows a downward trend. At that time, oral medications were not effective, and long-term subcutaneous insulin injections were the only way to control blood sugar.
Although the needles for insulin injection are relatively small, most of them can't handle the frequency of once or three times a day, and injection of insulin under the skin can also cause atrophy and hardening of subcutaneous fat.
Oral insulin
Is there any oral insulin? is actually the research on oral insulin,Humanity is always going on. At present, a technology company in Hefei has cooperated with Israel and many other countries to develop oral insulin, . However, this oral insulin is now entering the clinical trial phase, and according to reports from authoritative media, it is likely to be in The listing next year will undoubtedly be a great boon for the majority of diabetic patients.
At the same time, oral insulin has a relatively large advantage compared with subcutaneous insulin. We all know that subcutaneous insulin injection can easily cause hypoglycemia, and it can also cause problems such as subcutaneous lipoatrophy . oral insulin can not only relieve the pain of diabetes injection, but also imitate the mode of insulin secretion in normal people to the greatest extent, thereby reducing or avoiding the problems caused by traditional subcutaneous injection of insulin.
However, it should be noted that the price of oral insulin may be more expensive when it is first launched on the market. Because the manufacturers have spent a lot of manpower and material resources in the development and clinical trials of this oral insulin, they will definitely have to get this cost back. If you develop a new drug, you can’t make money or even lose money. It is estimated that in the future No one is going to do this.
However, everyone is not frustrated because of this. As manufacturers can recover the cost, the price of this oral insulin will gradually drop. Take rosuvastatin as an example. When it was first launched, the price was relatively expensive. Later, the drug was reduced from a few dozen dollars to a box of more than ten dollars, and it was also included in the medical insurance reimbursement. Range.
Before oral insulin was on the market, What the majority of diabetic patients can do is to control their diet, maintain a reasonable weight, keep exercising, take antihypertensive drugs on time, and monitor blood sugar. After this, blood sugar can basically be controlled. Don’t wait until the insulin cell function is almost exhausted before regretting it. Self-discipline is very important for diabetics.
