Good question. When you eat a meal, the amount of sugar in your blood goes up. That signals to your pancreas to make a hormone called insulin. Insulin tells your muscles to soak up the sugar in your blood. People with diabetes either don’t make enough insulin, or their muscles can’t “hear” the insulin message. They can take insulin shots to increase the amount of insulin in their blood making it so their muscles can soak up the sugar.

Insulin is a hormone helps your body get the energy from the food you eat! Diabetes occurs when your body doesn’t make insulin properly or it doesn’t make enough insulin.

People with diabetes have to take regular shots of insulin to make sure they can get the energy stored in the food they eat.

It's because their pancreas (an organ that produces a chemical called insulin) is defective in some way. Those shots contain insulin, which the body needs.