When you eat foods that are rich in carbohydrates, such as breads, cereals, or grains, your body breaks it down into glucose.
Also referred to as blood sugar, your body can use glucose for energy.
In a normally functioning system, a healthy pancreas releases insulin into the bloodstream, and this insulin helps to remove the glucose from your bloodstream for your cells to use as fuel.
In people who have diabetes, this process is dysfunctional.
Either their bodies do not produce any insulin, or the insulin that they produce cannot be used.
Because their bodies cannot convert the sugar in the blood into energy, people with diabetes have high levels of glucose in their blood­stream.
The kidneys of diabetic people need to work extra hard to filter the blood to remove the excess glucose.
This causes frequent urination and excessive thirst from fluid loss.
The liver is also involved in the process of maintaining normal blood sugar levels.
After you eat, the sugars from the food enter your blood­stream and are available as fuel, along with the triglycerides.
If not all the sugar fuel is used, either due to poor processing based on low insulin or a reduced need for energy based on a low activity level, the liver removes the excess sugar from the bloodstream, much in the same manner as it removes excess cholesterol, and stores it in the liver as glycogen.
If for some reason, you are unable to eat, the liver later can release this stored glucose into the bloodstream to provide an energy boost.
This helps to keep your blood sugar levels in a more constant range.
Diabetes consists of two main types, both characterized by the body's inability to process available sugar into energy.
The two major types are Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
People with either type can experience elevated blood glucose levels.