What is Insulin?
Insulin is a hormone. It makes our body's cells absorb glucose from the blood. The glucose is stored in the liver and muscle as glycogen and stops the body from using fat as a source of energy. When there is very little insulin in the blood, or none at all, glucose is not taken up by most body cells. When this happens our body uses fat as a source of energy. Insulin is not identical in all animals - their levels of strength vary. Porcine insulin, insulin from a pig, is the most similar to human insulin. Humans can receive animal insulin. However, genetic engineering has allowed us to synthetically produce 'human' insulin.