Insulin how does it lower blood sugar

This can happen over a few weeks, months, or years. When enough beta cells are gone, your pancreas stops making insulin or makes so little insulin that you need to take insulin to live.

Type 1 diabetes develops most often in young people but can also appear in adults. If you have type 2 diabetes, your body does not use insulin properly. This is called insulin resistance. At first, the beta cells make extra insulin to make up for it. But, over time your pancreas can't make enough insulin to keep your blood sugar at normal levels. Type 2 diabetes develops most often in middle-aged and older adults but can appear in young people. Some people can manage type 2 diabetes with healthy eating and exercise.

Diabetes is a progressive disease. Even if you don't need to treat your diabetes with medications at first, you may need to over time. Gestational diabetes is diabetes that develops during pregnancy. If you have insulin resistance, you want to become the opposite—more insulin sensitive cells are more effective at absorbing blood sugar so less insulin is needed.

These lifestyle changes really work. Talk with your health care provider about how to get started. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link.

Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Insulin Resistance and Diabetes. Minus Related Pages. Thank you for Subscribing Our Housecall e-newsletter will keep you up-to-date on the latest health information. Please try again. Something went wrong on our side, please try again. Show references Insulin basics. American Diabetes Association. Accessed June 14, Mantzoros C, et al. Insulin action.

Davidson MB. Insulin therapy: A personal approach. Clinical Diabetes. McCulloch DC, et al. General principles of insulin therapy in diabetes mellitus. Accessed May 6, What is diabetes? Afrezza prescribing information. Danbury, Conn. Accessed June 3, See also Medication-free hypertension control A1C test After a flood, are food and medicines safe to use?

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