Special areas in the pancreas gland, the Islets of Langerhans, produce a hormone called insulin. This hormone is a protein of small size. Insulin stimulates muscle cells and other body cells to take up glucose from the blood and convert the glucose to glycogen, a kind of starch, and then store the glycogen. By need the body cells convert the glycogen to glucose and use it as fuel. In this way insulin keeps the glucose level in the blood at a normal size.
By diabetes type 2, the cells in the body do not react properly by stimulation from insulin. Therefore they do not take in enough glucose from the blood to store it or to use it as energy source. This condition is called insulin resistance. The amount of glucose in the blood therefore rises. Also the insulin production can rise to regulate the glucose amount down, but this effort to reduce the blood glucose is not effective enough. If the disease persists for many years, the insulin production may tire out, so that the amount of secreted insulin decreases.
THE CAUSES AND MECHANISMS OF DIABETES TYPE 2
The exact mechanism that causes the disease is not known. There may be an autoimmune response to insulin or...