What Is Insulin-dependent Diabetes? When you eat, your body takes the sugar from food and turns it into fuel. (46) Your body uses glucose for energy, so it can do everything from breathing air to playing a video game. But glucose can't be used by the body on its own-it needs a hormone called insulin to bring it into the cells of the body. Most people get the insulin they need from the pancreas, a large organ near the stomach. The pancreas makes insulin; insulin brings glucose into the cells; and the body gets the energy it needs. When a person has insulin-dependent diabetes, it's because the pancreas is not making insulin. So someone could be eating lots of food and getting all the glucose he needs, but without insulin, there is no way for the body to use the glucose for energy. (47) . You may have heard older people talk about having diabetes, maybe people of your grandparents' age. Usually, this is a different kind of diabetes called non-insulin-dependent diabetes. It can also be called Type 2 diabetes , or adult-onset diabetes. (48) . When a kid is diagnosed with juvenile (insulin-dependent) diabetes, he will have that type of diabetes for his whole life. It won't ever change to non-insulin-dependent diabetes when he gets older. Scientists now think that a person who has juvenile diabetes was born with a certain gene or genes that made the person more likely to get the illness. (49) Many scientists believe that along with having certain genes, something else outside the person's body, like a viral infection, is necessary to set the diabetes in motion by affecting the cells in the pancreas that make insulin. But the person must have the gene (or genes) for diabetes to start out with-this means you can't get diabetes just from catching a flu, virus, or cold. And this type of diabetes isn't censed by eating too many sugary foods, either. Diabetes can take a long time to develop in a person's body-sometime months or years. Another important thing to remember is that diabetes is not contagious. (50)