Insulin and Type 2 Diabetes: What You Should Know

Producing Less Insulin Naturally Over Time

Research has shown that type 2 diabetes progresses as your body continually produces less insulin. Your beta cells -- the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin -- slowly lose function.

Experts believe that by the time you're diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, you've already lost about 80 percent of your beta cell function. And the loss continues.

"About six years after being diagnosed, most people have about a quarter of their beta cell function left," says Anthony McCall, M.D., Ph.D., endocrinologist and James M. Moss Professor in Diabetes at the University of Virginia Health System. "With this minimal function, the need for injected insulin increases."

Some experts believe initiating insulin or other blood glucose lowering medications early in the course of type 2 diabetes can lower blood glucose and even preserve some beta cell function.

Insulin resistance is another part of type 2 diabetes. It refers to your body's inability to effectively use the insulin you make. So type 2 diabetes becomes a two-fold problem -- not enough insulin being made and too little of that insulin effectively lowering blood glucose.