Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Levemir and Humalog, Day 2

The second day on Levemir went a little better. I was 81 at lunch (wohoo!) and 129 at supper. The 81 at lunch have been much lower. I overbolused earlier in the day, and I didn't eat extra to cover it. I was high to begin with, and I decided to keep an eye on it and wait to see what would happen. It worked out well. I am still fighting a few highs though. I plan on faxing my records to my endo on Friday. I think I need more levemir, but I am not confident enough to just raise it. I've heard you need to wait a couple of days before making changes in Lantus doses, so I'm assuming it is the same for Levemir.
Now, for some information on Levemir. It is the Novo Nordisk version of Lantus. It was approved by in FDA in June 2005. It was available in the UK before now. It is very similar to Lantus. It is a 24 hour analog. It does not have the sting that Lantus has. I take in once, at night.
I've been trying really hard to inject a few minutes before I eat, but its hard. I certainly can't wait more than 15 minutes. My life is just way too hectic to handle that. I am used to bolusing while I eat, about half way through the meal. It's an adjustment to decide exactly what I am going to eat before I even taste it.
Thanks for all the tips on calculating insulin on board. I think I'm going to try Felix's version. When I was pumping, I always had my insulin on board duration set to 3.5 hours. I have a hard time believing that insulin is equally active for 5 hours, but it is possible.
As for my mom, I know she's my mom and will always be my mom. So I guess I should expect her to always act like it then too. It just gets a little annoying sometimes. After all, I am still a teenager, right? That entitles me to a little teenage behavior. Thanks for all of the support! I appreciate it!

3 comments:

Christine said...

I'm glad things are going well. It sounds like the pump vacation will do you well.

Penny Ratzlaff said...

When Riley was on Lantus, we didn't change his dose without a three day pattern. We found that when we did change his Lantus dose, it usually took about 2 days for the dose to really make much of a change. But, not sure how much Levimir is like Lantus.

Felix Kasza said...

Hi again, Jen!

How is it going?

I was wondering -- the prescribing info on Levemir summarises a few of the studies Novo Nordisk did, and they all compared Lantus 1qd or NPH 2qd to Levemir 2qd -- i.e., they all assumed that Levemir was injected twice a day.

In addition, the action curve in their type-1 study shows a definite peak at ~9 hours for higher dosages (.4 U/kg -- 24 U for a 132 lbs person). At half that dose, the action curve ramps up quickly (~90 minutes) but then declines linearly, with the half-life reached at ~13 hours and very little remaining action after ~20 hours.

Do you find that Levemir works well with a once-daily dosing regimen? Could you compare it to Lantus?

I admit to being curious about how well Levemir works, given the above.

Thanks,
Felix.

P.S.: If you need prescribing info for just about any drug -- do a search on RxList.com. The pharmacology data for Levemir is here. The same for Lantus is there.