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How Does Insulin Help Diabetes?
Why Insulin Treats Diabetes
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People who have diabetes suffer from a serious deficiency of insulin. Human beings cannot survive without insulin, which converts blood sugar (glucose) into energy to be used by all the body's cells. Without insulin, the cells become starved of energy and eventually die, which leads to fatigue, blindness and even coma. Therefore, the only treatment for those with diabetes is to administer insulin, typically through shots (insulin cannot be taken as a pill because the body would digest it, rather than absorb it directly into the bloodstream where it is needed). Furthermore, insulin therapy for diabetes differs depending on whether the patient suffers from diabetes type 1 or diabetes type 2.
Insulin Treatment for Type 1 Diabetes
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For those who have type 1 diabetes, their bodies have stopped producing insulin altogether. That is because the beta cells in the pancreas, which are responsible for producing insulin, have been destroyed (it is not known precisely why, but many doctors estimate the underlying problem to be an autoimmune disorder that destroys the beta cells). With the total lack of insulin, their bodies suffer from extremely high blood sugar, since insulin is the hormone that absorbs excess blood sugar to regulate its release for energy. Therefore, patients with type 1 diabetes get insulin injections, which deliver the insulin to the blood vessels for direct use.
Insulin Treatment for Type 2 Diabetes
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Those who have type 2 diabetes have not stopped producing insulin altogether, but their cells have stopped responding to insulin. People with type 2 diabetes are often overweight, because they have an abundance of fat cells that are naturally more resistant to insulin. Therefore, type 2 diabetes is also treated with insulin injections. Another difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes is that the latter can go away on its own, if the body reaches a lower and healthier body weight, so that the body's cells once again respond to insulin.
eHow Article: How Does Insulin Help Diabetes?
