“World Diabetes Day” How Did Sir Frederick Banting Discovered The Insulin That Could Treat Diabetes?
Millions of people around the world suffer from diabetes, but until the 1920s there was no treatment for it. Sir Frederick Banting was a Canadian scientist whose pioneering work using insulin to treat diabetes earned him the Nobel prize. He only lived to be 49 but on November 14 — what would have been his 125th birthday — Google has celebrated him with a commemorative Doodle. November 14 is also World Diabetes Day. How does insulin work? For your body to use glucose, the fuel that comes from carbohydrates, it must be transferred from the blood to your body’s cells to be used up as energy. The vital hormone that allows glucose to enter cells is called insulin and it is normally produced naturally in the pancreas. If this process doesn’t happen, the level of sugar in the blood becomes too high. Being unable to naturally produce insulin is the disease known as diabetes. More than 4 million people in the UK are diagnosed with it, and it is a major cause of kidney failure,...