Trafficking in the blood

Candy, coke, chop: sugar found in many foods. Barely slipped through the stomach into the intestine, slips of the sugar into the bloodstream through the intestinal wall. The blood brings the sweet substance to the hungry cells. Brain, muscles, heart - all organs need glucose as fuel. Without him, would starve the cells, they would die.


Many body cells can not simply absorb the sugar from the blood. You need help with this: The hormone insulin the sugar smuggled through the wall of the cells in its interior. Without insulin, the smuggling of sugar would remain on the sidelines, so the blood. Then the sugar concentration in the blood is too high, experts speak in such a case of a high blood sugar or hyperglycemia value.
This hormone comes from the pancreatic gland

Insulin is produced by the pancreas gland or, more precisely in the beta cells of the so-called islets of Langerhans, small clusters of cells in the tissue of the gland. There, the hormone is also stored. Around ten milligrams of insulin keeps the pancreas gland always in stock, enough for about five days.

Once we've eaten, empties a portion of memory. The high amounts of sugar in the blood signal the pancreas to release insulin. Because the beta cells begin immediately with the production of new insulin, the depot quickly fills up again.
The cells are checked for illegal

So the smugglers hormone, insulin cells help the hungry while eating, it needs to be found on the cell surface grip. Thus serve as docking sites called receptors. The loops are designed so that only insulin can fix them. Almost all body cells have on their surface such insulin receptors. Once the hormone has been linked into the receptors, the starving body cells absorb sugar from the blood. Thereby slow the sugar content in the blood decreases.

Supplied the cells begin immediately to dismantle the sugar to produce energy for their work. What they do not consume immediately, lands in the energy reserves of the liver and muscles. Such deposits are not from glucose, the cells can burn, but from a special form of memory, called glycogen. With the transformation of glucose in these insulin helps glucose storage as well. The hormone stimulates the liver and muscles to build storage depots of glucose.