With a league-leading 10.5 sacks at the midway point of the NFL season, it's clear to see that Minnesota Vikings pro bowl defensive end Jared Allen has his hands full.

But lucky for type 1 diabetics, Allen's passion for taking down the opposition extends beyond sacking quarterbacks. Lined up with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation as an advocate to raise awareness, Allen wants to run the chronic illness that affects nearly 3 million people nationwide into the ground.

The fight against type 1 diabetes has been a cause taken up by several celebrities over the years, from actors Mary Tyler Moore and Halle Berry, who both have the disease, to John Ratzenberger, who has a diabetic son. But Allen's strive to raise diabetes awareness is unique in that he has no direct ties to the disease.

Allen, who joined up with the JDRF while a defensive end with the Kansas City Chiefs, said in a recent interview that his involvement came about almost accidentally when he received a letter from a friend with a diabetic son about a JDRF Walk for Cure fundraiser.

Already looking for a charity to become involved with, Allen said that a meeting with a JDRF regional representative made him decide that the organization was a team that he had to become a part of. One thing that struck him was the staggering number of children and teens afflicted with the auto-immune disease, which requires daily insulin injections and finger-pokes for blood sugar checks.

"I started off by doing little things, and I started to get a connection with the kids and the families," Allen said. "I was touched by seeing what these kids had to go through on a daily basis, like things they had to do just eat a cookie. These are things that people without diabetes don't have to worry about because our body regulates the sugar intake. But to see 9-year-old kids working their insulin pumps, asking questions about what to do ... That's stuff that any kid at that age should not have to face. Seeing them keeps me working hard to do something about it."

The 6-foot, 6-inch Allen, known as much for proudly sporting his mullet hairdo under his helmet as he is for his play on the field, knows that the vital key for finding a cure for type 1 diabetes is funding for research.

To do his part in Kansas City, he formed a walk team affectionately dubbed Marching for Mullets. In his first year in Minnesota in 2008, he started the "Sack Diabetes" program, promising to donate $3,000 for every sack he recorded that season. By the time all was said and done, the dominating No. 69 donated nearly $50,000 to JDRF.

This season, Allen donated $50,000, mainly to target research into Smart Insulin, an experimental drug which he believes is a huge step forward in diabetes treatment.

"If you can take a shot of insulin that regulates your blood sugars, that's dang near a cure in itself," Allen enthused. "That's phenomenal."

No matter the promise any research shows, Allen is determined to stand up against diabetes for as long as it takes to find a cure, and he's willing to line up with those determined to beat the disease. In June, Allen accompanied two teen delegates from Minnesota and North Dakota to Washington for the JDRF's biennial Children's Congress, where 150 kids from around the nation made their plea for expanded federal funding into diabetes research.

"I had a chance to not only talk to senators, but to doctors and researchers who are developing some new things," Allen said. "It was really eye-opening to see the advances from 10 years ago to where we are now. It makes you hope (that) in the next few years, we can really push towards not just improving the quality of life for people, but just curing the whole disease."

While Allen, 27, clearly has many great years ahead of him in the NFL, he's quite aware that at some point he'll have to move on. But with his post-career desire to do rodeo -- we're already getting a sneak peak at his rustling moves after every one of his sacks -- Allen is amused at the thought of changing the name of his "Sack Diabetes" program to something like "Lasso Diabetes" to keep up with his efforts.

No matter what he calls his initiative, Allen said he'll be a part of the JDRF as long as they will have him. After all, his involvement with the organization has changed his life.

"I have lifelong friends because of JDRF. These are not only dear, close friends of mine, they've become my family," Allen said. "It gives you a great sense of worth to give back off the football field. It's exciting to see the expressions on people's faces, not for anything you've done on the field, but for the attention you've brought to type 1 diabetes off of it. I'm glad to help bring that hope and excitement, and to push for something to happen until the day it gets cured."