Letâs Talk About âUnitsâ â and Why Theyâre Not What You Think
Written by: James Lydia Lynde Letâs Talk About âUnitsâ â and Why Theyâre Not What You Think Ever wonder what a âunitâ actually means when it comes to medication or peptides? It's a question that often leaves people scratching their heads, especially when trying to figure out how much of a substance they're actually getting. Let's dive into the history and meaning of "units" in medication, and why they can be confusingâespecially when compared to more familiar measurements like milligrams or milliliters. The word unit sounds straightforwardâbut in medicine, itâs anything but. It doesnât refer to a set volume (like a milliliter) or a weight (like a milligram). Itâs a measurement of biological activity, originally developed when medications couldnât easily be measured by weight alone. So Where Did âUnitsâ Come From? The term was first widely used with insulin, which couldnât be easily weighed in the early 20th century. Researchers had to determine how much insulin it took to lower blood sugar in animals, then base dosing on that effect. One âunitâ of insulin became the amount needed to drop a rabbitâs blood sugar to a specific level. This made it easier to compare and prescribe insulin consistently, even if different batches had slight variations in concentration. Since then, âunitsâ have been used for other medications where potency or biological activity is more important than volume or mass. But thatâs also where the confusion starts. A Unit Is NOT a Universal Quantity Letâs make this super clear: A unit is not a fixed amount of medication. A "unit" doesn't tell you the actual amount of medication in milligrams or grams. Instead, it tells you the biological effect of that medication. This means that the same number of units could contain different amounts of the active ingredient depending on how the solution is prepared. Now what happened to have unit be a measurement on an insulin syringe? Way back they determined the amount of the Insulin that caused the desired biological activity - and then just called that a "unit" - and it became common use and is frequently used when referring to an amount of liquid to be injected.