70/30 is among the insulins available without rx for only $25 / vial.
What would be a good baseline protocol in an emergency to survive on 70/30? I’m assuming that most people don’t have an indefinite supply of strips laying around— so let’s do a little role playing exercise— imagine you have 10 vials of 70/30 in your fridge. You’ve never used it. You’re used to all the latest and greatest MDI and pumps, cgm, whatever. To make it interesting let’s say you only have 100 test strips on hand. A disaster strikes and you have no access to more insulin or more test strips… how do you manage ?
As 70/30 is one of the affordable options that we can afford to build an emergency stockpile with it is a good idea to have some idea how to put it into use if we ever needed to. Good to think these things through in advance…
Just for the ultimate in simplicity-- I believe this is the preferred protocol in many less developed parts of the world still where resources are limited, so it seems like it might be a worthwhile backup plan.
Any situation where the supply chain to your preferred insulin and test strips breaks down and you are stuck relying on a stockpile that you could afford to build and maintain in advance…
If you have sufficient food, take a dose that corresponds to the 70% matching 1/3 of your normal total daily basal.
And take it 3 times a day, 8 hours apart. Like 8am, 4pm, 12am
Example:
If your normal basal is 30, you take 14.0-14.5 units of the mix, 3 times a day. Less at night if you don’t want to eat during the night.
For a basal of 30/day, the calculation is:
(30 / 3) /.7 = 14.29 units. You can see that doing that 3 times gives you about 30 units of basal and 12.8 units of bolus insulin.
You are not eating meals, you are grazing. You eat to the insulin.
Provided you have sufficient food, you just graze and eat to your dosing. If low you eat a little bit. If high, you don’t eat until your BG comes down, or it is time for your next dose.
That is if you think this thing ends soon. Doing it like that keeps you alive 7.5 months.
If I think the apocalypse lasts longer, I cut that dose in half or in thirds, and then I am eating minimal amounts. And I try to obtain a centrifuge, sulfuric acid, alcohol, filter paper, and pigs, cows, goats, or sheep so I can make my own insulin.
Why 7.5 months? I’d try to keep a substantially longer stockpile than that, and I think any insulin someone like you or I could make ourselves would be incomprehensibly crude and an infinitely poorer option than 70/30…
Some interesting topics I’ve seen discussed about how much carb intake will really matter with insulin usage over the long run,… if you went ultra LC do you think your insulin sensitivity would change so that eventually you’d be using more than a directly proportional amount? I notice when I work in different environments with different diets for a few weeks… if I eat more carbs I seem to become more bolus sensitive, when I eat less carbs I eventually require more bolus to cover them,…
Dude, tears, running down my face. I swear FUDiabetes makes the best bedtime stories. So funny. (Except for the sad ones, but this zombie apocalypse thing is funny!)
And I thought I was doing okay with a modest food and water and insulin stockpile! Ha!
I have chickens, but I don’t think their pancreases are up for the job! I will keep pressuring @EricH for more animals for my mini farm. I do think that the city would object though.
True, you will have to harvest less pancreases to get to the 2 tons, but you are still going to need two tons. Probably only going to work for those that run a slaughterhouse post-apocalypse.
If anyone had asked me three months ago if I thought I’d ever be having a conversation about moose pancreases, prepping for a zombie apocalypse by getting a slaughterhouse, popover recipes, carb counting, inhalable insulin, and how to trick a BG meter, I certainly would have said no.
