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Originally Posted by Ronin  ... While I am a slim, exercising senior (>60) who manages his diet, and has a low C-Peptide reading would the addition of a small dose of insulin actually help or might it make things worse? .... |
Ronin, here is the case for taking insulin
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It seems like there is some uncertainty about your diagnosis. But in the end it doesn't really matter. In view of the fact that you c-peptide is low, you appear to be insulin sensitive, but blood glucose is above normal, we can reasonably conclude that a lot of beta cells must have been lost. There is no way of knowing how many of your beta cells have been lost, but there is a lot of built in redundancy. So by the time blood glucose starts going up large proportion of beta cells will have been lost - probably 30% - 40% of them.
This means that the remaining 60% - 70% of your beta cells are working overtime to keep your blood glucose down. And it is thought that all this hard work shortens their life. It causes "beta cell burnout". In which case injecting some insulin might just help them to last longer. This is how T1s and T1.5s extend their honeymoon period.
The next question I guess is when, what type and how much insulin to take. It would make sense to supplement your endogenous insulin where it is needed most. In your case that seems to be at mealtimes. If you could help your beta cells deal with the carbs by taking short acting insulin before you eat, they would be more easily able to maintain normal blood sugar during the rest of the day.
I don't think there is a compelling reason to do anything to reduce your your BG levels as they are near normal anyway. But it may be worth taking action to ensure that it stays that way in the future. Kinda like taking insulin as a prophalactic
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