By: CDC

Most of the food we eat is turned into glucose (sugar) for our bodies to use for energy. The pancreas, an organ near the stomach, makes a hormone called insulin to help glucose get into our body cells.

Diabetes means that a person’s blood sugar is too high. Your blood always has some sugar in it because the body needs sugar for energy to keep you going. But too much sugar in the blood can cause serious damage to the eyes, kidneys, nerves, and heart.

Types of Diabetes

There Are Two Main Types Of Diabetes:

Type 1

Type 2

Another type of diabetes appears during pregnancy in some women. It’s called gestational diabetes.

One out of 10 people with diabetes has type 1 diabetes. These people usually find out they have diabetes when they are children or young adults. People with type 1 diabetes must inject insulin every day to live.

The pancreas of a person with type 1 makes little or no insulin. Scientists are learning more about what causes the body to attack its own beta cells of the pancreas (an autoimmune process) and stop making insulin in people with certain sets of genes.