When it comes to your body, you probably spend more time
thinking about your hair than your hormones. For some people,
though, a problem with a hormone called insulin causes a health
condition called type 2 diabetes (pronounced: dye-uh-be-tees).
What Is Diabetes? Diabetes is a disease that affects how the
body uses glucose (pronounced: gloo-kose), a sugar that is the
body's main source of fuel. Like your cell phone needs a
battery, your body needs glucose to keep running. Here's how it
should work: Glucose from the food gets into your bloodstream.
Your pancreas makes a hormone called insulin (pronounced: in-
suh-lin). Insulin helps the glucose get into the body's cells.
Your body gets the energy it needs. The pancreas is a long, flat
gland in your belly that helps your body digest food. It also
makes insulin. Insulin is like a key that opens the doors to the
cells of the body. It lets the glucose in. Then the glucose can
move out of the blood and into the cells. But if someone has
diabetes, the body either can