Diabetes is a disease in which the body cannot make energy from food as it should. This is because the body doesn’t produce
enough insulin, or else the insulin produced is not working properly. Insulin is an important hormone. We need insulin to
help our body’s cells take up sugar from food. The cells then make energy from the sugar. Sometimes cells don’t respond to
insulin. This can also cause diabetes.
More than two million Canadians have diabetes. Each year, 60,000 more cases are diagnosed.
People have known about diabetes for a long time. About 2,500 years ago, someone wrote the first medical text that described
a symptom of diabetes – producing too much urine (pee). The word “diabetes” was later used to describe people who had to urinate
often, because diabetes means “to run through” or “to siphon” in Greek. In the 17th century, doctors found that people with
diabetes had sweet urine. They added the Latin word “mellitus,” meaning honey. This is how we got the name diabetes mellitus.
What happens in the body when someone has diabetes?
A person with diabetes is missing the essential hormone insulin, or else the insulin is not working properly.
A hormone is a chemical “messenger” that travels from one part of the body to another, to tell it what to do. Only with insulin
can the body use the sugar in the food we eat to make energy. If there is no insulin, people lose sugar in their urine, and
cells can’t make energy.
We need energy to:
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produce our body heat
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make our muscles work, our hearts beat, our lungs breath, our brain think
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allow the growth, renewal, and repair of the billions of cells that make up our bodies
Without insulin, we can’t survive
Insulin is made in the pancreas. This is an organ located just behind the stomach. Special cells in the pancreas known as
beta cells make insulin. Beta cells are found in islands of tissue named the islets of Langerhans.
There are different kinds of diabetes, but children and teens usually develop type 1 diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, the beta
cells have been destroyed and the body cannot produce any insulin. More and more teens are starting to develop type 2 diabetes.
With this type of diabetes, the body can usually produce some insulin. However, either it is not enough or it doesn’t work
well enough to keep blood sugar levels normal.
