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.

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