Hormones

Insulin
Insulin (from Latin: insula, meaning island) is a protein hormone. It’s produced in the
pancreas by endocrine cells. Insulin is used to let cells absorb glucose from
carbohydrates, fats and proteins, to transform that into glycogen or fats. In the liver
the glucose is transformed into both glycogen and fats.
The cells that make the insulin, called the beta cells, are sensitive to the
concentration of sugar in blood. So the cells make insulin in relation to how much
sugar there is in the blood.
If not enough insulin, or no insulin at all is made, you can get diabetes. When that’s
the case, you can have very big health problems. You also get hyperglycaemia,
which means that you have a high concentration of sugar in your blood.

What do I expect to learn during this chapter?

I am sure about the fact that we will be talking about hormones, because that is the
subject of this second chapter of the year. We already talked about the fact that
hormones are a mean of communication between the cells in an organism. Also
about different types of communication, and how the cells receive the “messages”. I
think we will talk about different types of hormones. And also their functions and
where they’re made. Maybe we will talk about what they’re made of, the hormones,
but I’m not sure about that.