[DoreenMichele]

Most likely it's complicated, inconvenient and time consuming. The big thing modern medicine seems to have solved is that popping a pill or taking an injection has a lower barrier to entry in terms of skill and knowledge than other approaches.

If you care enough to learn other approaches, it's sometimes* possible to get superior results compared to the "plug and play" medical answer.

* (I actually want to say "often" but I don't really want to argue it. "Sometimes" seems less likely to get me dragged into pointless drama.)

[sgt101]

There is no "family recipe" to deal with Type 1 - if you don't get injectable insulin you die. It was a sure fire killer from when it was first identified (ancient egypt) to Banting and Best.

Insulin from animal sources is not as good as bioengineered insulin and it takes a lot of animals to make it.

[DoreenMichele]

Insulin from animal sources is not as good as bioengineered insulin

Respectfully, we may not actually know that. It's somewhat unusual for us to go back and re-test older methods after replacing them with a new-fangled thing and sometimes things change.

Actual natural quinine is proving to be more effective at treating malaria than synthetic derivatives. Various strains of malaria have grown resistant to the synthetics while natural quinine still works.

Modern drugs tend to strip things down to a single chemical and sometimes the more complex natural remedies have benefits that we are unable to capture with our superior ability to isolate components and refine them.

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” — Ben Franklin

In the past hundred years, there are things that have fundamentally changed about the world -- such as just the simple ability to somewhat reliably deliver clean water to ordinary people in developed countries -- and we may someday be able to revive older treatment methods and improve upon them to get something better than what those once were and also better than what we currently have.

These days, people with serious conditions pretty routinely do things at home that involve sterilizing instruments and other procedures that most people imagine can only be done in a hospital setting. A modern home can have assets, such as clean running water and various kitchen appliances, that would be the envy of many a scientist not that many decades back.

I hope we find better answers for type 1 diabetes soon.

[RHSeeger]

>> Insulin from animal sources is not as good as bioengineered insulin

> Respectfully, we may not actually know that.

We really do. While it's possible that animal sourced insulin may be better for your body long term (doubtful), bioengineered insulin is FAR superior in every noticeable way. Just the fact that you don't need to take it an hour ahead of time and make sure that you eat an mount that matches how much insulin you took is a huge benefit.