INSULIN AND GLUCAGON

INSULIN AND GLUCAGON

Insulin and glucagon play super important roles in the body.

During nursing school, you'll need to know about the role of insulin and the role of glucagon in the body. This will help you understand many of the med surg disorders you'll learn about during nursing school, like diabetes and other endocrine disorders.


Here are the key points you need to know for nursing school:

1. The role of insulin is to move glucose into the body cells so that it can be used by the cells for energy.

Think of insulin as a key that unlocks the body's cells. Without insulin, glucose isn't able to move inside the cells, so it just stays in the blood.

2. There is also another key role of insulin that you need to know about in nursing school: that insulin tells the liver to store glucose as glycogen.

Glycogen is just a big fancy word for stored up glucose. So insulin tells the liver to keep some of the glucose (and store it as glycogen) so that the body cells can use it for later).

3. The role of glucagon is totally different than the role of insulin. Glucagon tells the liver to break down some of it's stored up glycogen into glucose.



CRITICAL THINKING:

1. During high blood sugar, which hormone would you expect to be released by the pancreas? Insulin or glucagon?

Answer: INSULIN

When there is a lot of sugar in the blood (high blood sugar), insulin is released from the pancreas to move that glucose into the body cells so that they can use it for energy. Insulin also tells the liver to store some glucose as glycogen, so it can be saved for later.

2. During low blood sugar, which hormone would you expect to be released by the pancreas? Insulin or glucagon?

Answer: GLUCAGON

When there isn't enough glucose in the blood (low blood sugar) for the cells to get enough energy from, glucagon will be released from the pancreas to tell the liver to break down some of it's stored up glycogen into glucose. So the liver will release some extra glucose into the blood stream, so that the cells can use it for energy.



I hope this helped to clarify the role of insulin and glucagon for you!

Be sure to print off the FREE med surg study checklist that I have for you. It will walk you through, step-by-step, how to study for med surg in nursing school. You can snag it right here: https://nursingsos.lpages.co/youtube-...


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