Mixing Insulin
If your diabetes management plan includes taking multiple types of
insulin, you may want to combine two types of insulin in one shot. But
before you start mixing shots, be sure that the types of insulin you
want to combine are compatible with one another or you risk altering
the effect of your regular insulin. For instance, you can mix regular
and NPH insulin and still maintain the effects. However, you cannot
mix regular insulin with lente or ultralente insulin without possibly
loosing some of the regular insulin’s effect.
The reason regular insulin looses effectiveness when mixed with lente
and ultralente insulin is because the latter contain excess zinc,
which binds to regular insulin and slows its absorption. If you do
choose to mix regular and lente (or ultralente) insulin, you will need
to inject it immediately after you’ve mixed the dose, so the zinc does
not have a chance to bind to the regular insulin. Though it is
inconvenient, if you need mix regular and lente insulin, it is
probably best to take them as separate injections each day.
Reproduced with permission from "101 Tips Series"
(c) American Diabetes Association (r)
July 23rd, 2003 at 1:41 am
Andrew, glad to see you got the lantus you were looking for. I think
I’m getting better at deciding what I need than my doctor does……
July 24th, 2003 at 4:00 am
Lantus should never be mixed. Some say not to even inject another
insulin in the same general area as Lantus. When I started using
Novolog along with the Lantus I was told to use one side of me for
Lantus and the other for Novolog*G*
The article was not of much use really, since Lente and UltraLente are
being phased out and no longer being produced. But if it causes
someone to think before mixing doses it might help someone anyway.