hi this is Tom from zerof finals.com I'm going to go through some quick things today um just about uh blood glucose regulation and how this relates to type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes so let's get straight into it so I'm going to go ahead and talk about some key organs that are important when looking at the regulation of blood glucose so the first organ to start with is the small intestine this sits in the middle of the abdomen it's where your food is broken broken down and absorbed into the bloodstream as glucose so anytime you eat carbohydrates this is where it's absorbed into the bloodstream the next important organ to be aware of is the pancreas the pancreas produces insulin in the beta cells and it produces glucagon in the alpha cells okay the next organ is the liver now the liver is important because it stores glucose so when there's plenty of glucose around it can store it as glycogen and it can also produce glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis which converts things like amino acids into glucose the final organ is the muscles of the body this is where glucose is absorbed um stored as glycogen and can be used at a later time when more glucose is needed so there's a quick overview of the important organs that are involved in glucose metabolism next I want to give a bit of a graphical representation of how these organs affect the blood glucose level so here I've got a diagram along the bottom you can see this is supposed to represent a blood vessel and then this inside is the bloodstream and these little blue hexagons represent glucose molecules so here for example this is just a nice ordinary level of glucose in the blood the body's very happy with this level so let's take a typical scenario where a person eats a large bowl of rice that Rice enters the digestive system into the small intestines is broken down into glucose and absorbed into the bloodstream okay so now we have as a reaction to all of that new glucose arise in blood sugar levels so what happens now well the pancreas senses this rise in blood glucose level and it produces a hormone called insulin now what this hormone insulin does is it targets the liver and it targets the muses and it tells them to absorb glucose from the blood into the liin muscles and store it as something called glycogen and this is a storage molecule for the glucose so as a result of this action the blood sugar level drops back down to normal and everybody's happy so let's take an opposite scenario let's imagine that the blood glucose level is low now this might be because of increased uh demand for glucose by the body let's say during exercise or during periods of intensed uh thought processes where the brain is using a lot of glucose now what happens here is is the brain senses that the blood glucose is low and it might trigger a hunger response which means that more food will be enter into the small intestine and absorbed as glucose the other thing that will happen is the pancreas will sense this low glucose and it will produce another hormone called glucagon what this glucagon does is it targets the liver and it targets the muscles and from both of these it does the opposite effect of the insulin it causes glycogen to convert into glucose it also tells the liver to produce new glucose and this is a process called glucon neo genesis so this means new glucose being made and this is where glucose is made from either proteins um or other chemicals so what happens if you have a situation of diabetes Well there's two types of diabetes first we'll talk about type 1 diabetes and that's quite simple to explain essentially it's where the pancreas stops being able to produce insulin so as the blood glucose Rises to a level of high blood glucose the pancreas can't signal to the liver or muscles to use that glucose so the blood glucose remains high and if the small intestine keeps piling in more and more and more glucose this never gets depleted and the person gets in a state of severe hypoglycemia and as a result several other things happen you end up with a situation of diabetic keto acidosis and ultimately uh it's not compatible with Life so the only treatment for type 1 diabetes is to replace that insulin uh with a subcutaneous injection of synthetic insulin so that's type one diabetes type two diabetes is where you have this chronic hypoglycemia from a life of uh high intake of um carbohydrates and what this causes is resistance in the liver and the muscles to the insulin so what you need is so insulin's trying to tell the liver and muscles to take up this glucose but because they're so used to this signal they're so used to the insulin that they become very resistant and you need more and more and more insulin to give the same effect okay so essentially the pancreas produces tons of insulin uh and the liver and muscles respond less and less to this signal and ultimately what happens is that the pancreas wears itself out and so instead of being a high level of insulin the pancreas stops being able to produce as much insulin and you end up with the situation of low insulin and the end stages of type 2 diabetes which with a chronically high level of glucose so that's situation of we've been through how insulin is how blood glucose levels are controlled we've been through um what happens in type one and been through what happens in type 2 diabetes and this video is really in preparation for more videos that are yet to come about the different types of treatments for type 2 diabetes so keep an eye out for those if you like this video please check out the it zerof finals.com why not subscribe on the YouTube channel and check out some of the other videos so I'll see you next time