The human body’s ability to control blood sugar depends on a blood borne hormone called insulin, created by the pancreas, a small organ near the liver. Insulin is the body’s natural response to blood sugar levels. Just after a person eats, the food is digested and converted into glucose for the cells to use as an energy source. The trigger that tells cells to use glucose, rather than fats, is insulin.

Diabetes is a disease where the body either does not produce insulin (because the cells that produce it were either not created, or destroyed by the body’s immune system) or the body has become resistant to the insulin that it creates. In both cases, the solution is to replace the insulin with an outside source, usually by insulin injection therapy.

Modern insulin injections are made by genetically engineered e coli bacteria to create human insulin, and is one of the oldest directly genetically engineered products on the market, dating back to the early 1980s. Before that, insulin was harvested from other animals, including sheep and pigs. The most common way of administering insulin is by injection, usually by way of a specialized hypodermic needle called an injection pen.

These pens come in two varieties - reusable and disposable. A disposable pen for insulin injection has a premeasured dose of insulin, is injected, and then discarded. A re-usable pen has a disposable needle tip and a cartridge with insulin doses, and offers more flexibility. Many pens are dual purpose digital blood glucose meters and injection tools, where the blood meter will give a good cue as to how much insulin the diabetic must inject.

Choosing the right dose of insulin is something that someone undergoing insulin injection therapy has to consider; with experience it comes from knowing how much you’re intending to eat, or how much you’re going to exercise after eating, and the goal is to mimic the natural fluctuations in insulin level that a person without diabetes has.

Fortunately, because of the genetic engineering needed to produce human insulin from e coli bacteria, the hormone itself is fairly inexpensive; most of the cost of insulin injection therapy is on the delivery mechanism, buying replacement needle tips.

Insulin needs to be kept within a specific temperature range to remain viable, and most diabetics bring an injection kit (with a blood glucose monitor) to properly gauge what’s needed for a given dose and usage pattern. With proper education, insulin injection therapy turns diabetes from a guaranteed death sentence to a manageable chronic condition.

If you worried about diabetes glycemic index can help you. Do you know that this index measures the rate that you blood sugar level rises after a food is digested and absorbed by the body? This is the reason why it can help you control your insulin level.

If you are suffering from diabetes, the one thing that you really need to be cautious of is the sudden rise in your sugar level for this may cause attacks or seizures. So for diabetes glycemic index is really essential for it determines how the food affect the blood sugar activity. Foods with a high rank would be the ones that will cause spike on the insulin level so it would be best to eat something with lower carbs instead.

Common foods that rank low are those rich in protein and fibrous. So you may maximize on these foods, examples are most fruits and vegetables. Though, this would not really hinder you from eating high ranking foods because you just have to eat them along with a protein to help counter act the effects of the carbohydrates.

It really helps if you can manage your blood sugar level. For example, you just finished a simple work out and your blood sugar level begins to plummet and continues to do so, eat foods with a higher number so as to stabilize it. On the other hand, if you want to keep the level from rising, then eat something with a lower number.

It really feels great when you can control your health. Knowing how you can prevent harm being caused to your body by the foods you eat will make you live longer. Good thing that the diabetes glycemic index is there to be of help in managing or controlling the harmful effect that foods may cause to your body.