What Exactly IS Diabetes?

Diabetes is the condition in which the body does not properly process food for use as energy. Most of the food we eat is turned into glucose, or sugar, for our bodies to use for energy. The pancreas, an organ that lies near the stomach, Did-You-Know-by-Dans-Newsletter-June-2015makes a hormone called insulin to help glucose get into the cells of our bodies. When you have type 2 diabetes, your body either doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use its own insulin as well as it should. This causes sugar to build up in your blood. This is why many people refer to diabetes as “sugar.”

-Source: The National Diabetes Education Program; CDC National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion