This was one of the comments posted below the article that may answer your question: Epistemologist2: As a physician myself, with Type I diabetes for the past

This was one of the comments posted below the article that may answer your question: Epistemologist2: As a physician myself, with Type I diabetes for the past 56 years, I have lived through quite a lot of change in the management of my diabetes. I am particularly concerned about the discussion in Myth #2. The inexpensive insulin, U-100 Regular Insulin, is readily available and it is just as potent, unit for unit, as the newer synthetic insulins. What is different is the rate of onset of action. Regular Insulin does not "turn on" as quickly as the others, but if taken in advance of a meal will do the job sufficiently well that you can maintain reasonable blood sugars. The over-riding intent with insulin therapy is to mimic natural insulin production/action in one's body. The expensive modified insulins become active much faster and consequently will more closely mimic natural insulin release, but it is critical to note that once injected, those insulins do not turn off as promptly as naturally produced insulin from the pancreas, and this can be a serious problem! In my case, I had had my diabetes for about twenty years and was adequately controlled using those "old" insulin products extracted from beef and pork pancreas after which we got the now inexpensive Human Insulin, chemically identical to that from the human pancreas, and it did not "turn on" any faster than the predecessor products. It was not until 1996, 33 years into my own diabetes, that we saw the introduction of a synthetic insulin with much faster onset of action. Bottom line is that the price of the fancy new insulins should not be such a barrier that it leads to one's death. The inexpensive older products work, just like you old "dumb" phone works to do its basic job. Newer is better, but not critical, and neither doctors nor patients should forget that using older techniques and products is a viable option. It is the doctor's failure to think outside the box to adequately educate the patient that causes death.