[ What's insulin ]

What's insulin?

• Beta cells make a kind of hormone insulin inside the pancreas. And insulin can help the body use or store the blood sugar (glucose) it gets from food with each meal.
• Insulin is a protein, which means that it cannot be taken orally as a pill without being destroyed by enzymes in the stomach and intestine. This means that it has to be injected into the fat under your skin for it to get into your blood, although new formulations of insulin with novel modes of delivery are in clinical trials
• Originally derived from the pancreas of cows and pigs, virtually insulin now in use is not only human insulin but also animal insulin. Human insulin is derived from recombinant DNA techniques, which involves mass production from specially engineered bacteria or yeast.
  

Basic Function of Insulin

• In people with type 1 diabetes, the pancreas no longer makes insulin. The beta cells have been destroyed. They need insulin shots to use glucose from meals.
• People with type 2 diabetes make insulin, but their bodies don't respond well to it. Some people with type 2 diabetes need diabetes pills or insulin shots to help their bodies use glucose for energy.
• Strict control of blood glucose levels in patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes can result in a reduction of 25 percent in microvascular complications. Insulin therapy is recommended for an increasing number of type 2 diabetic patients because of the accumulating evidence of benefit from strict blood glucose control.