Insulin Pump – Let Insulin Pump Therapy Add Freedom to Your Life

 
One of the most common ways that many diabetics control their blood glucose levels is with insulin therapy. While eating a good healthy balanced diet can be a great help there are those who must use insulin such as patients diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

There are two main methods for infusing insulin into the body to help regulate glucose levels, the standard method that has been used for many years is the injection of a regulated dose with a needle and syringe and  in recent years the development of an insulin pump that is kept attached to the patient's body.

Your body needs a certain background level of insulin to function properly whether you have diabetes or not and when you eat your body need to produce a sudden surge of insulin to help break down the glucose within your bloodstream to provide the fuel that keeps your body running.

In the non diabetic the pancreas creates the insulin that is needed, however in the diabetic the pancreas is not functioning correctly and either produces too little insulin or none at all.

If you rely on several injections a day for your insulin you cannot control how much of it is being used to digest the meal you have just eaten and how much remains available for background blood sugar level maintenance. This problem was the main drive behind developing the insulin infusion pump as a way to provide more accurate and reliable insulin treatment for diabetes.

With an insulin pump you have the ability to set a background or basal rate of insulin flow that is constant 24 hours a day for all normal body functions and when you eat you can give your insulin rate a boost with an instant delivery or bolus of insulin.

Some insuline pumps such as the Minimed insulin pump continuously monitor your blood sugar levels and provide you with a digital readout of them. Not only will you be able to instantly see your current glucose level, but it can store a history of your reading so that you can more accurately program the rate of flow. This can help to reduce the severity of the highs and lows many diabetics experience. This type of insulin pump may also have alarms that can be set to sound when your blood glucose levels go above or below preset levels so that you can adjust the flow of insulin.

The insulin pump feeds the insulin into your body via a very small tube that is connected to a canula inserted under your skin. Since you only have to replace the canula 12 times a month it is far less painful than the average 120 injections most diabetics have to face with a needle and syringe. While the pump is not fully automated by any means it is capable of delivering a far more accurate and useful continuous dose of insulin and has far more flexibility than any other insulin therapy on the market. Once you have learned to use the pump you will find that it offers you far more freedom to lead a normal life than the injection ever did.