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Today I would like us to learn a bit about blood sugar. We would define what blood sugar is, the normal range of blood sugar, the important of knowing your blood sugar levels and also how blood sugar is regulated in our body.
Firstly we would start with what blood sugar is. Blood sugar is the amount of glucose present in the blood of a person. glucose is basically sugar and it's approximately 4 grams of glucose are present in the blood of humans at all times. The body has a great effect on the regulation of the blood sugar level and it does that as part of metabolic homeostasis.
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Blood sugar is very essential in humans and the normal range for blood sugar ( tested while fasting) thus for non diabetes should be between 3.9 and 5.5mmol/L.
Do we know that glucose is the primary source of energy and it's critical for normal function in a number of tissues. Now I guess we do. Glucose levels are usually lowest in the morning before the first meal of the day and rise after we take our meal for one hour or two by a few millimole.
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It is very important that we do note that blood sugar levels outside the normal range can be very threatening to our Norma body function. A persistently high blood sugar level is referred to as hyperglycemia and low blood sugar level is termed hypoglycemia.
When one has persistent hyperglycemia, it's an indication that the person has developed a medical condition called diabetes mellitus and it's the most dominate disease related to failure of blood sugar regulation.
Shockingly alcohol intake could cause an initial increase in one's blood sugar level and later it tends to cause levels to drop.
Also certain drugs can increase or decrease one's sugar level. So we should take caution in our intake of certain drugs and also the intake of alcohol.
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REGULATION OF BLOOD SUGAR
mostly our blood sugar level is regulated by our bodies homeostasis which inturn helps to keep one's blood glucose within the normal range. It is greatly made up of many interesting systems of which hormone regulation of the most important.
With our blood sugar levels there are two hormones that greatly affects it and they are
1. Catabolic hormone (such as glucagon, cortisol and catecholamines) which causes one's blood sugar level to increase immensely. And the other is
2. Anabolic hormone (insulin) it's role is to help decrease one's blood sugar level
The hormones mentioned above are both secreted from the pancreatic islet. The pancreatic islet is made up of four different types and the Include: Alpha (A) cells which mainly secretes glucagon.Beta (B) cells which secretes insulin. The remaining two are Delta (D) cells and F cells.
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The insulin together with the glucagon help to regulate ones blood sugar through negative feedback; a process where the end product of one reaction stimulate the commencement of another reaction.
Insulin lowers blood sugar levels in the body and when the blood sugar decrease, it triggers the secretion of glucagon which causes it to increase and the cycle continues._
In conclusion, blood sugar is a very important component in our human system and when well regulated helps to sustain good health. We should from time to time check our blood sugar levels inorder to either prevent any disease condition or help to manage diabetes
Thank you for reading
