Diabetes is a life-long disease that affects the way your body handles glucose, a kind of sugar, in your blood.

Most people with the condition have type 2. There are about 27 million people in the U.S. with it. Another 86 million have prediabetes: Their blood glucose is not normal, but not high enough to be diabetes yet.

What Causes Diabetes?

Your pancreas makes a hormone called insulin. It's what lets your cells turn glucose from the food you eat into energy. People with type 2 diabetesmake insulin, but their cells don't use it as well as they should. Doctors call this insulin resistance.

At first, the pancreas makes more insulin to try to get glucose into the cells. But eventually it can't keep up, and the sugar builds up in your blood instead.