Hi there I am Christel from Diabetes Strong and today we're going to talk about how I rotate
my insulin injection sites so if you manage your diabetes with insulin like I do it is
really important that you pay attention to how you rotate your sights so it's important that you make
a dedicated effort and it doesn't matter if you're a pump or if you use insulin pens or syringes you
still need to rotate your sites the thing is if we do not we can build up a lot of scar tissue
and that build up scarce tissue can compromise the absorption of the insulin that you inject so
important stuff rotating your insulin injection site simply means not injecting your insulin in
the same place over and over again and the good news is there's actually plenty of places on
your body where you can inject insulin insulin is meant to be injected into fatty tissue so
most of us use our belly for that but you can also use your love handles kind of the side
side fat there's also your thighs your inner outer thighs so the fattier part you can also
inject on the backs of your arms just make sure you don't inject directly into the muscle
some people also use their lower backs as well as their upper glutes or their your
their backside as long as you can squeeze a little bit of fat tissue between your fingers
you can inject I manage my diabetes using insulin pens so multiple daily injections or MDI
that means that I inject a basal insulin and I inject rapid-acting insulin for all my meals and
all my corrections so that's a lot of injections throughout the day my rabid-acting insulin I
currently use something called Humalog I usually take that inject that either in my stomach or
on my arms so for example I squeeze a little bit of fat here I try to rotate that throughout the
day by going one and then my belly here my belly here here and then simply rotate it clockwise
that works for me it's not super structured I would love a more structured way actually
but that's the way I do that my basal insulin inject that in my lower back or my upper glutes
to my butt that one I'm actually a little more structured about so let me show you
this is my sight rotation sheet that's what it looks like after just over a month of injections
and I'll explain it because it doesn't really make a lot of sense like that
but every little mark here indicates an insulin injection you can see the numbers
it's just the sequence that I take the insulin off so I have six different sequences each has
each has six marks for each sequence so that means it's 36 injections so just over a month so that
means that when I follow this process this process I won't inject in the same place twice for 36 days
so let me just show you what the idea is here so the way I
draw it up let's say like that is that first thing is this is sort of the bikini line or
the panty line and again it's my back side right so if you imagine like a pair of granny panties
they look like that okay so bear with me creative creativity here and then we have our legs
right so the thigh comes down thighs come down here okay and I just do the
line of through but that's basically what we need right then that means L for left R for right
pretty basic here right so I'm not super artistic I usually start here so that's why I put
down a one so that simply means that the top of my bikini line that is where I'll start my injections
so let's say that this morning or let's say a few days ago I took it there I would just
put a mark there saying okay I already injected there next day I'll inject on the left-hand side
right hand side left hand side right hand side left hand side that's six days
after that then I move to my second area and I repeat the process
and that's simply how I do that so I inject you know pretty much around the bikini line on my back
side so that would be my lower back that would be sort of my glutes and then I inject as well
down my thighs so that's number six so that's where I sort of end up
so upper thigh and then I simply move down the thigh again so very simple very low tech just
put down a mark for every injection again means for me that I get through you know 36 different
injection sites and for me it works I haven't had any issues with lumps or significant scar tissue
so this is very structured but it's also very low tech again
it's a notepad so I bring this with me when I travel I put this with my insulin when I'm
at home I have my insulin in a drawer it just lies there next to my insulin pen
and that way I mean if I inject so for the longest time I was just trying to wing it
right so I would inject and I was like oh i think I remember what I injected yesterday
no way you can remember 36 injections okay so just doing something as simple as this
and I can let's just do a screenshot here so you can see it a little closer that's what it looks
like just by doing something as simple as that I can keep track of my site rotation making sure
that I'm not injecting in the same place over and over again
so that's how I do it let me know how you manage your site rotations I would love some tricks for
you know the upper arms for the stomach that doesn't require me to hold around a whole notebook
I hope you enjoyed this video thank you so much for watching