A simple guide to blood glucose regulation and a brief overview of the two types of diabetes. This video is designed to build a fundamental understanding of blood glucose regulation so that we can go into more detail in future videos about the different types of anti-diabetic medication.
Hi this is tom from zero to finals comm i’m going to go through some quick things today just about blood glucose regulation and how this relates to type one 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 is start
With is the small intestine this sits in the middle of the abdomen it’s where your food is 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’s 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
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 we’ve got a diagram along the bottom you can see this is most represent of 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 glue and absorbed into the bloodstream okay so now we have as a reaction to all of that new glucose a rise 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’s hargett s’ the muscles and
It tells them to absorb glucose from the blood into the liver and 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 demand for glucose by the body let’s say during exercise or during periods of intense 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 gluco neo genesis so this means new glucose being made and this is where glucose is made from either proteins 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 one 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 hyperglycemia and as a
Result several other things happen you end up with a situation of diabetic ketoacidosis and ultimately is not compatible with life so the only treatment for type 1 diabetes is to replace that insulin with a subcutaneous injection of synthetic insulin so that’s type 1 diabetes type 2 diabetes is where you have this chronic hyperglycemia from a life of high intake
Of carbohydrates and what this causes is resistance in the liver and the muscles to the insulin so what you need is so insulin is 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 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 this situation of low insulin and the end stages of
Type 2 diabetes with a chronically high level of glucose so that situation of we’ve been through how insulin is can how blood glucose levels are controlled we’ve been through what happens in type 1 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 website at zero to finals com why not subscribe on the youtube channel and check out some of the other videos i’ll see you next time
Transcribed from video
Blood Glucose Regulation and Diabetes By Zero To Finals
