﻿Alright, then on that note why don't we
move onto the next part of the pancreas,
which is known as the endocrine pancreas.
And this is actually the part of the pancreas
that is the most famous.
We hear the most about this as we'll see in a minute
because it has a lot to do with diabetes.
The endocrine pancreas will release hormones
rather than the salts or enzymes we saw above,
"will release hormones" that go into the blood stream.
And they will move on elsewhere throughout the body,
to the liver perhaps the intestine,
or even as far as muscles to cause things to happen.
And the way the endocrine pancreas is organized is that
there are many "eyes lit" cells,
it's actually pronounced "eye-lets" but I'm mispronouncing it
just to let you know how it's spelled.
Islet cells that exist and sit in islands, "Sit in islands."
So, there are three types, or three main types
of islet cells that we're going to talk about
and they're all present to some extent in each island,
or group of cells in the pancreas.
Let's go through them one by one.
So, first of all, we've got what are called
alpha islet cells, "alpha islet cells."
And these guys release a hormone
that's called glucagon, "glucagon".
And the main function of glucagon
is to take things like glycogen,
which is a whole bunch of glucose molecules that are
stacked up on top of each other,
and then break them down
into smaller glucose monomers or molecules.
So, we're making glucose from glycogen
whenever we release our glucagon.
I'll write "glucagon" up here.
And it's not just carbohydrates.
But glucagon is responsible for the breakdown
of a whole bunch of macromolecules.
So, I'll just drive it home by writing,
"glucagon causes break down" over here.
The next type of islet cell that we have
and perhaps the most famous of them all
are our beta islet cells.
So, our beta islet cells house and release insulin.
Now when you hear "insulin", there should be
a lot of lightbulbs coming up because
insulin is responsible for a whole bunch of things.
For one, when we look over here, insulin is what causes
the opposite of this reaction,
where instead of breaking down glucagen into glucose,
insulin causes glucose to be stored
or built up into glycogen.
So insulin does the exact opposite.
And again to drive that home.
It's not just for carbohydrates,
but its for a whole bunch of things that get built up.
So I'll write "insulin is responsible for the build up
or storage of our macromolecules".
But what might be the most important thing
to mention about insulin,
is that it is the hormone that is related to
or responsible for the disease known as diabetes.
Gosh, we could have entire tutorials on diabetes
and what it does and what it means.
But for right now, just know that at it's bare basics,
diabetes occurs or causes damage to our bodies
because we have too much glucose, "too much glucose",
floating around in our body, too much sugar, alright?
And that happens because insulin is not working properly.
We're not building up and storing glucose and glycogen
like were supposed to be doing.
Instead it's running all over the body.
And because of that, we have what's called
"eye, nerve and kidney disease",
that's sort of the catch phrase we use in medicine
to describe diabetes.
It's eye nerve and kidney disease because with too much
glucose over time we're unable to see.
The nerves most commonly in our feet are not able
to sense pricks or stings or damage that occurs there
and eventually can cause amputation.
And our kidneys stop working over time,
which can lead to dialysis and that causes early death.
And in addition to these three,
glucose goes all over the body and causes
a whole bunch of other things like
earlier onset of heartattack
and other types of complications.
The other thing I should mention about diabetes
is that there are two types of diabetes,
"there are two types".
There is type one diabetes and there is type two.
And the way you differentiate type one versus
Type two diabetes is based on how it's caused.
And this all points back to insulin.
In type one diabetes, we have no insulin.
So, the person who has type one diabetes
has no insulin production.
And because of that we're not able
to store our sugar and glycogen,
we're not able to put it away.
And so we have it all over the place.
That causes eye nerve and kidney disease
among other complications.
In type two diabetes, your insulin receptors.
So, you have insulin that's being produced,
but your insulin receptors are broken,
"your insulin receptors are broken".
So, even if we do produce insulin
and it goes where it's supposed to go in our body,
these receptors will not respond.
And so it's as if we don't have insulin in our body at all.
And there's so much more that we can say here,
but we'll close our conversation on diabetes for now
and we'll revisit this later.
Let's move on to the third type of islet cell
we've got in the pancreas and those are delta islet cells,
"delta islet cells".
And these are the guys that release a hormone called
"somatostatin" which is the major party pooping hormone
released from the pancreas because its main job is to stop
the jobs of all the other hormones that are active.
And these hormones can include things
like we've talked about here, glucagon, insulin.
There are other hormones that are
also contained in the GI tract that include things like
cholecystokinin that we talked about elsewhere.
And symatostatin will go in and cause
the effects of those hormones to stop
and that's sort of its main role there.
So, that's our endocrine pancreas
and we talked about earlier our exocrine pancreas.
So, the pancreas is responsible for a lot.
No wonder surgeons have the phrase,
"Eat when you can, sleep when you can,
and don't mess with the pancreas."