Editor’s Note, DCMS #79: New Joslin Excerpt

When my interns come to my rotation they have to live like they have type 2 and type 1 diabetes and this includes injecting themselves with saline based on calculating their insulin dose. A couple of years ago I was discussing this with an endocrinologist friend and mentioned that sometimes I will tease the students by telling them they have to inject insulin instead. He told me that if we gave the students no more than 40 units of insulin over a day (not that we would do so) that they would not experience hypoglycemia. This made me wonder how much glucose I would have to give them to get their glucose up to levels that they would feel. Our Clinical Text excerpt from the JOSLIN’S DIABETES DESKBOOK – A Guide for Primary Care Providers, Updated 2^nd Edition, has the answer to that question and exactly how the pancreas goes about regulating glucose levels.

This week our Disaster Averted looks at what happens when we measure insulin doses in BMI’s and not units, while this week’s Homerun Slides look at the value of using pramlintide with insulin.