Living With Diabetes

Most of what you eat is carbohydrates. Your body breaks them down into sugar. The sugar is used for energy.

But people with diabetes cannot do this. Their bodies do not break down sugar into energy. Without treatment, diabetes can lead to blindness, heart disease -- even death. Millions of people around the world have diabetes. You are more at risk for diabetes if you are overweight.

Fred Banting was a Canadian doctor. He discovered how to make a drug called insulin. He took insulin from dogs and made it into a shot. When diabetics took the shot, it helped their bodies convert sugar into glucose so they could be healthier. In 1923, Banting won the Nobel Prize in medicine for saving millions of lives.

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