This is how I have come to understand the workings of blood sugar. Please point out where I’m going wrong.
Glucose (sugar) comes from food. Insulin is a hormone that turns glucose into glycogen (fat) in the liver. The hormone glucagon turns glycogen back into glucose. Diabetics produce too little insulin, so their body can’t properly turn glucose into glycogen. So, if they don’t take their insulin with a meal, their blood sugar becomes too high. So far so good.
But how does this lead to low blood sugar? Their glucagon is working fine, so they should be able to turn glycogen into glucose when they need it. Right? Does this only occur when a diabetic accidentally takes too much insulin?
There are tons of different sources on this topic, but they’re either too confusing or they contradict each other. It doesn’t help that there are two types of diabetes. If anyone can explain, I’d appreciate it a lot!
In: Biology
The biochemistry is complex, don’t get medical information from Reddit, that’s what doctors are for.
The problem with all these control systems is that they aren’t instantaneous. These are relatively slow biologic systems, and the delays are seconds to minutes.
Injecting insulin, on the other hand, is a discrete square-wave input. That excites the balance of the process, and can drive it to high or low extremes. That’s one advantage on insulin pumps that slowly release it in little bits.
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