Page 91 - The Miracle of Hormones

f you ate food containing a little more sugar that
you needed, a system in your body would go
I into action to prevent the elevation of the propor-
tion of sugar in your blood.
1. First, the pancreas cells would find and distinguish
the sugar molecules from among all the millions of
other molecules in your blood. Moreover, they would
count the sugar molecules to decide if the number were
too high or too low. Amazingly, cells too small for the
eye to see, without eyes, hands, or a brain know the cor-
rect proportion of sugar molecules in a fluid.
2. If the pancreas cells determine that there is more
sugar in the blood than required, they decide to store
the excess. But they themselves do not do the storing;
they have other cells, located far away, to do this job.
3. These distant cells, unless a command to the
contrary comes to them, have no desire to store sugar.
But the pancreas cells send a hormone to these cells
commanding them to store sugar. The formula of this
hormone, called insulin, has been coded in the DNA
of the pancreas cells from the moment they come
into being.
4. Special enzymes in the pancreas cells (work-
er proteins) read this formula and produce insulin
accordingly. In this production hundreds of indi-
vidual enzymes perform a different function.
5. The insulin produced reaches the target
cell by the most reliable and rapid communica-
tions network—the bloodstream.
6. The various cells that read the com-
mand to store sugar written in the insulin hor-
mone obeys it unconditionally. As a result, the