My parents and both brothers have to manage their type 1 diabetes (T1) with up to five shots of varying insulins a day. There are a lot of needles floating around our family. In fact, we've even taken to joking about it. Whenever we all get together for summer fun, birthdays and the like, there's one table off the kitchen in my parents' house which is the natural dumping ground for diabetes gear. Strewn with blood glucose testing kits, test strips and insulin pens for four T1s, we now refer to it as the Diabetes Table. Lose your sunglasses? Check the Diabetes Table.

Occasionally my kids will even score a de-sharpened needle to play with in the tub. At six and three, they love to shoot water at various tubby targets. We break off the metal tip and let 'em play away. But my kids may lose their tub toy someday -- there's new research on insulin delivered via a pill.

Researchers are testing a new gel which could potentially deliver insulin intact to the desired destination -- the intestine -- bypassing the stomach completely. Stomach acids and enzymes break down proteins like insulin, a real spoiler to oral insulin delivery. So far in the lab, insulin-loaded gels have been able to sustain acidic stomach-like conditions for an hour. Interestingly, polymer chains within the gel change shape in less acidic conditions like the intestine -- making the hydrogel swell and release its insulin. The gel is also designed to adhere to the intestinal wall, providing crucial time to deliver the insulin. 

Frankly, I'm ever-wary of any new insulin delivery method. Inhaled insulin was supposedly going to revolutionalize insulin delivery -- but it's been a flop -- Pfizer has scrapped Exubera, its first inhalable insulin. Cheek patches never made it to market either.

But cynicism aside, I quietly am rooting for any new advances in T1 insulin delivery that reduce the number of needle sticks people with diabetes face. For years I've watched my family prick fingers for blood glucose checks and administer several shots of insulin daily. Managing diabetes is a terribly difficult load to haul -- a burden of pain, bruising and inconvenience that never ends. With a healthy pancreas, I just pick up an apple and eat it. People with T1 diabetes have lost that freedom.