1. Twice-daily mixture of short acting and intermediate or long acting insulin

It is a 'conventional' therapy in which a mixture of short and long acting insulin is given in the morning and then again before the evening meal. Insulin is either drawn up from different bottles into the same syringe or use the pre-mixed insulin (disposable pen injectors). One plus point of this regimen is that there is no need of insulin shot at lunch and dinner time, but it becomes very essential to maintain timings of each meal. And, delaying or skipping of any meal will be oblivious cause of hypoglycemia. Lack of flexibility is again a problem if, a pre-mixed insulin is used as it is harder to vary the insulin dose according to the changes in your daily routine. The doses of short and long acting insulin cannot be varied independently of one another.

This regimen works as follow:

the morning short acting insulin takes care of breakfast
the morning long acting insulin takes care of lunch
the evening short acting insulin takes care of the evening meal
the evening long acting insulin takes care of overnight insulin needs