• A. The liver
  • B. The pancreas
  • C. The kidneys
  • D. The spleen

💡 Need help?

This organ is tucked away behind your stomach and has a dual job: it produces both digestive enzymes and hormones that monitor your blood sugar levels.

✅ View the answer

The correct answer is B. The pancreas (or pancreas, if you want to be fancy) produces insulin. This happens in very specific cell clusters called the ‘islets of Langerhans’ - yes, that’s really the name - and specifically in their beta cells. Simply put, insulin allows sugar from your blood to enter your cells, where it’s used as fuel or stored for later.

📚 More background information

The pancreas is one of those organs you don’t normally think about, but it does quite a lot. The thing is about 6 inches long and weighs between 2.5 and 3.5 ounces - comparable to a banana. It sits somewhat hidden behind your stomach in your upper abdomen.

What makes it special? It essentially has two jobs at once. On one hand, it produces hormones like insulin and glucagon (that’s called the endocrine function), and on the other hand, it also makes enzymes that help digest your food (the exocrine function). Pretty efficient, actually.

The discovery of insulin in 1921 was truly a game-changer. Frederick Banting and Charles Best found it, and before that time, type 1 diabetes was practically a death sentence. Banting received the Nobel Prize for it in 1923, which he graciously shared with Best. Since then, it has saved millions of lives.

In the United States, approximately 37 million people have diabetes. The majority of them have type 2. With type 1, the immune system goes haywire and attacks the insulin-producing cells - not helpful. With type 2, the pancreas often still produces insulin, but your cells no longer respond to it properly. That’s called insulin resistance.

About those other answer options: the liver does help with blood sugar regulation by storing glucose as glycogen, but it doesn’t produce insulin. Your kidneys filter waste from your blood and maintain your fluid balance. And the spleen? It’s mainly busy with your immune system and cleaning up old red blood cells.

As for production: a healthy pancreas produces about 40 to 50 units of insulin per day in adults. This obviously varies by person and depends on what you eat and how active you are. After eating, your blood sugar shoots up, so the pancreas pumps out extra insulin to get that glucose into your cells. Between meals, there’s a small, constant stream of insulin for basic metabolism.

Oh, and here’s where it gets clever: that same pancreas also makes glucagon, which does exactly the opposite of insulin. Insulin lowers your blood sugar, while glucagon raises it when it threatens to drop too low - for example, between meals or during exercise. The two keep each other nicely balanced, like a kind of biological thermostat for your blood sugar level.

You don’t need to have diabetes to find this interesting. It simply perfectly demonstrates how cleverly our body is designed and how different organs constantly work together to keep everything running.