What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a chronic condition that affects how your body turns food into energy. When you eat, your body breaks food down into sugar and releases it into your bloodstream – where it travels to cells to be used for energy.
What is insulin?
Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas that helps unlock cells and let sugar in to provide energy. Diabetes occurs when your body does not make enough insulin, makes no insulin at all, or doesn’t respond to insulin properly. As a result, sugar stays in the bloodstream, which over time can lead to several serious health issues.
We are committed to driving change to improve treatment options for people living with diabetes from more effective medicines to better delivery systems. We believe insulin treatment should be simple. We strive to ease the burden of living with a chronic disease and meet the diverse needs of millions of people living with diabetes.
In type 2 diabetes, your body does not respond to and use insulin as well as it should. Or it may not make enough insulin. Most people with diabetes have type 2. Some risk factors for this kind of diabetes include older age, having obesity, family history, being physically active less than three times per week and having certain ethnic backgrounds.
Type 2 diabetes can be treated with oral medications (medicines by mouth), non-insulin injectables, insulin, or a combination of these medications, along with a healthy diet and exercise. Whether you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, it's possible to lead a full and active lifestyle when the disease is properly managed under the supervision of a diabetes care team.
In type 1 diabetes, the body makes little or no insulin, due to an immune system response that destroys insulin-producing cells. So people with type 1 diabetes must take insulin every day. Type 1 diabetes usually occurs in children and young adults, but it can also appear in older adults.
Within type 1 diabetes, we are currently conducting research in the
following areas:
- Glucose-responsive insulins
- Connected insulin delivery devices
- Curative stem cell treatment
When we combine the voice of someone living with a chronic disease with our scientific expertise and engineering skills, we can continue to discover and develop innovative insulins and delivery systems.
If you have some of these symptoms or think that you have diabetes, you should speak with a healthcare provider.
Our diabetes Health Coaches can help answer your questions one on one, provide healthy eating ideas and tips, as well as help you stay motivated to set and reach your goals. Your Health Coach is ready to assist by phone, text or email on a schedule that’s convenient to you.
Simply call 1 (877) 322-0281 from 9 AM to 6 PM (ET) Monday-Friday.
