I was going to write about my switch to Toujeo...

I had pretty high hopes for a recent switch in my basal insulin. I’ve discussed it a bunch in my Vlog on YouTube and I promised to write about it here and give a full report. So here is my experience of Toujeo: it’s Lantus in a different colored pen with an even sillier name. I didn’t experience weight gain or an increase in the dose like some detractors had warned me about online. I didn’t experience better or more stable blood sugars as some proponents had predicted. It was basically the same-same dose, same action, same stability. If there were any advantages gained in my switch they were imperceptible.

The one thing that this trial DID reinforce is the very perceptible benefit of splitting the dose of Lantus or Toujeo. I started off taking a full dose of Toujeo and found that it did exactly the same thing as Lantus in a single daily dose: lows up front then increasing blood glucose from hour 18-24. This left me chasing my numbers up and down the spectrum for more than half of the hours in a day. Once I returned to splitting my dose the stability in my numbers followed with it.

One needn’t look very far on social media and diabetes forums to find people who will tell you that “injections suck” and that using a pump is inherently superior. I find that many of those who hold to this view never experimented with the nuances of basal insulin and failed to dial in their dosing. I readily admit that’s why I didn’t have a great experience on the pump. I took the “starter” settings and didn’t get far beyond that point. Turns out that’s a pitfall that occurs when using injections too.

My purpose in writing this isn’t to compare shots vs pumps. I’ve already done that in this blog linked here. It’s to share that in my experience, many times over, splitting a basal insulin into two half-doses daily makes a massive difference in terms of blood sugar stability. I have noticed more and more pumpers taking “breaks” and going back to injections and this technique could be very useful-and it’s surprising to me how many doctors don’t recognize that. I’d love to see a day when insulin that is advertised as “24-hour” insulin actually lasts that long. Come to think of it, I’d love to see a day when medication isn’t wrapped up in marketing, period. In the interest of full disclosure, I am currently moving to trying Tresiba in hopes that it may at least be able to give me that full 24 hour duration. If there’s anything to report, I will.

Ready for my disclaimer? Here goes: this blog post isn’t paid content and all the opinions here are my own. I am 100% certain that the companies which manufacture and all of the drugs referenced here do not condone my blasphemy in the form of non-FDA approved usage of their products. They haven’t asked me to provide an opinion nor have they paid me for this service. They also haven’t paid me to shut up, so I’m still here ranting about how we can use older, cheaper therapies to get better results with a little ingenuity.