The pancreas is a long, flat gland in your belly that helps your body digest food. It also makes insulin. Insulin is like a key that opens the doors to the cells of the body. It lets the glucose in. Then the glucose can move out of the blood and into the cells.
But if someone has diabetes, either the body can’t make insulin or the insulin doesn’t work in the body like it should. The glucose can’t get into the cells normally, so the blood sugar level gets too high. Lots of sugar in the blood makes people sick if they don’t get treatment.
The pancreas is responsible for producing insulin. The cells which produce insulin are beta cells. These cells are distributed in a cluster of cells in the pancreas called the Islets of Langerhans, named after the anatomist who discovered them.
Insulin is a hormone that helps to regulate blood sugar levels by assisting the transport of glucose from the blood into neighbouring cells.
In type 1 diabetes, the beta cells that produce insulin are attacked by the body’s immune system.
As more beta cells get killed off, the pancreas struggles to produce enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels down and the symptoms of diabetes begin to appear.
Research has shown that whilst many beta cells are killed off, the body can continue to produce very small amounts of insulin even after decades have passed.
In type 2 diabetes, the body builds up resistance to insulin and more insulin is needed to bring down blood glucose levels. As a result the pancreas needs to produce more insulin than it would normally need to.
If the pancreas can no longer produce enough insulin to bring down sugar levels, the symptoms of diabetes will begin to appear. Type 2 diabetes comes on gradually and it can take up to years for symptoms to appear.
Further development of type 2 diabetes can lead to loss of insulin producing beta cells from the pancreas which can lead to the need for insulin to be administered.
Credit : Diabetes.co.uk
Picture Credit : Google
