• Question: How are diabetes and hormones linked?

    Asked by Eilidh123 to Amy, Craig, Laura, Partha, Saffron on 17 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Laura Wales

      Laura Wales answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      Diabetes is caused when blood sugar (glucose) levels are too high because the body can’t use it properly. It could be because the pancreas isn’t producing any insulin, enough insulin or because the insulin produced doesn’t work properly.

      Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder. The immune system usually ignores healthy cells but with this type of diabetes, the immune system destroy the beta-cell in the pancreas that produce insulin. This means that there is no insulin to control blood glucose levels.

      Type 2 diabetes develops when there is not enough insulin produced or when it doesn’t work properly.

      There is also gestational diabetes which happens to a woman during pregnancy. This type of diabetes disappear once the baby is born but it does increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

    • Photo: Amy Cameron

      Amy Cameron answered on 19 Jun 2015:

      Also in type 2 diabetes you can become non-responsive to insulin and produce more and more to compensate. Overtime the cells that produce insulin become exhausted. In type 2 diabetes you need to take drugs such as metformin to reduce the increased blood sugar levels.

      In type 1 diabetes people are treated by having daily injections of insulin.

Comments