Understanding

This section should improve your understanding of diabetes and allow you to successfully manage it, so that you can continue to live a normal, healthy life.

Insulin is a hormone that allows the cells in your body to take up and use blood glucose sugars. The glucose comes from the food you eat. Diabetes is usually first detected in childhood or when someone is a teenager. Most young people who have diabetes have type 1. Type 1 diabetes is controlled with insulin injections, when insulin is injected, it causes the body tissues to take up the glucose, which is then used as fuel.