Diabetes is a disease that affects how the body uses glucose; a sugar that is the body’s main source of fuel. Your body needs glucose to keep running.
Here’s how it should work
- You eat
- Glucose from the food gets into your blood stream
- Your pancreas makes an hormone called Insulin
- Insulin helps the glucose get into the body’s cell
- Your body gets the energy needs
The pancreas is a long, flat gland in your belly that helps your body digest food. It 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 enter the cells.
But if some-one has diabetes, either the body can’t make insulin or the insulin does not work in the body like it should. The glucose can’t get into the cell normally, so the blood sugar (glucose) level gets too high and lots of sugar in the blood makes people sick if they don’t get treatment.
