What is the pancreas used

Question: What is the pancreas used
- Keywords:
  pancreas
Asked by 328bdya24 to Andy, Duane, Giovanna, Katie, Theresia on 7 Nov 2014.
- Theresia Mina answered on 7 Nov 2014:
  
  Hi 328bdya24,
  
  Pancreas produces insulin and other important hormones and enzymes to digest (“chemically cut into pieces of”) our food. Pancreas works hand in hand with other organs to ensure that all hormones and enzymes are ready to act as soon as you start thinking of eating! Isn’t it cool? We need insulin to maintain our blood glucose level, and I’m sure you’ve heard about diabetes…so this is when people are unable to produce insulin properly, which can be dangerous if left untreated. Hope this helps!
- Duane Mellor answered on 7 Nov 2014:
  
  Hi 328bdya24
  The pancreas is probably my favourite organ.
  It has two main roles, 1 is to help us to breakdown our food so we can use it, to do this it makes enzymes that shred our food in to molecules we can absorb as Theresia says. secondly it makes hormones, as Theresia said it makes insulin (my favourite hormone) which helps us move glucose from our bodies into muscles so we can use it. It also produces the opposite hormone to insulin glucagon, which allows our bodies to move glucose from our liver to our brain in between meals. So overall although only small and shaped like a christmas tree, this small organ tucked behind your liver has many roles which if it were removed would need a lot of tablets and injections to replace it!
- Katie Pickering answered on 7 Nov 2014:
  
  I don’t research organs so I’m just going to say yes to the other guys answers!
- Andrew Philp answered on 7 Nov 2014:
  
  I’m with Duane and Theresia on this one, the pancreas is a fantastically important organ in the body as it regulates the amount of circulating glucose we have in the bloodstream via the release of insulin.
  Skeletal muscle is one of the really important parts in this process as insulin tells skeletal muscle to take in the glucose from the bloodstream and use it as a fuel or store it within the muscle as glycogen. So effectively the pancreas and muscle ‘talk’ to each other through insulin and this is a crucial part of whole body glucose regulation.
  Protecting the pancreas is really important as we know that obesity, inactivity effect the insulin response. Its a vicious circle as increases in glucose concentrations as a result of poor diet & inactivity then result in the pancreas releasing more insulin. The muscle loses its sensitivity to insulin and so the pancreas has to produce more and more to try and get the muscle to take in the glucose, until eventually it can no longer produce enough insulin and eventually fails. This is one of the factors involved in the development of type 2 diabetes as the systems designed to remove glucose from the blood fail and so individuals regularly have high glucose levels which then have bad effects on all major organs in the body.
- Giovanna Bermano answered on 9 Nov 2014:
  
  Hi 328bdya24
  you have got great answers from my colleagues….I can just add that it is a very important organ and what it secretes even more!! Insulin for example is a very clever molecule which is able to tell cells in the body to deal with high level of glucose in the blood just after we had a doughnut for breakfast. However when we eat too many doughnuts and we get obese, the amount of insulin produced increases to very high level and have bad effects on different cells in the body. We have done experiment in the lab where we grow cells from breast tissue in the presence of high quantities of insulin, and saw that they behave differently, grow very fast and bypass any check the cells has to stop uncontrolled growth….they become like cancer cells!!! This provided more information of why obese individuals have a higher risk of developing cancer when they grow older and another piece of the jigsaw for preventing disease!!!

Question: What is the pancreas used

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