Advances in diabetes treatment have recently brought us non-insulin injectable medications, which can be a great option to help you control your diabetes and stay healthy.
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Dr. Goddard: Many of the more recent developments in diabetes treatment have been allowing the body to utilize insulin better.
Dr. Goddard: Type 2 diabetes is really a disease of too much insulin, insulin resistance, and the body's inability to use insulin.
Dr. Goddard: There are some medications on the market now that are non-insulin injectable medications. Most of them fall into a group of medications called GLP-1s. GLP-1 is a hormone that our bodies make; people without diabetes have GLP-1 as well. And GLP-1 prevents the breakdown of insulin.
Dr. Eytan: This is a really nice class of medications that basically makes your insulin work better and also slows down your gastric emptying, slows down your food digestion.
Jennifer: GLP-1s are already naturally in your body, so it just gives you more.
Dr. Goddard: By giving you more GLP-1 through an injection, you can actually increase a patient's insulin sensitivity, and if they take injectable insulin, you can often decrease the doses that they need to maintain a normal blood sugar.
Dr. Eytan: Those are available once a day, once a week, we have a few options out there now.
Jennifer: People do lose weight with the GLP-1s, so usually that makes them really like it.
Dr. Goddard: In most cases, patients with type 2 diabetes need to lose weight and so this can actually be helpful.
Jennifer: You will feel more full and you will have better control over your sugars. Usually if someone is already taking insulin and already used to the injections, they also don't mind as much taking the once-daily injection. If someone is new to shots, it's less scary giving the weekly injections.
Dr. Eytan: It's a really common fear to be afraid of needles and to delay using a GLP-1 agonist or insulin, because of that fear of needles. However, I always find that patients imagine the needle to be much worse than it is.
Jennifer: The needle sizes are so small that once you do it the first time, then it actually gets easier, because you realize that it doesn't hurt at all.
