The case for bitter melon in diabetes keeps looking better and better. New information and new products have come out, though there are still no large studies on humans.
To review: Bitter melon is a fruit and a vegetable, nobody can decide which. It grows in most tropical countries in Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, and the Caribbean. It goes by the names bitter melon, bitter gourd, bitter squash, karela, and goya, among many others. The scientific name is Momordica charantia. It seems to lower blood sugar well. Look at the comments to my 2013 article on bitter melon or read customer reviews for any bitter melon product such as teas or capsules. You will find overwhelming agreement that Momordicaworks. The main complaints are about taste, and some people get digestive upset, as can happen with metformin. There seems to be a risk of going too low if you take bitter melon along with certain diabetes medicines such as insulin or a sulfonylurea. There may also be a risk of going low using bitter melon along with metformin. You’ll have to proceed carefully and speak to your health-care provider if you’re on these or other medicines, as bitter melon can interact with a variety of drugs, but a number of readers commented that they lowered their doses or stopped meds completely with their doctor’s approval. How bitter melon works is not known, but at least three active ingredients have been isolated in the lab. An article in The Open Medicinal Chemistry Journal in 2011 listed multiple chemicals from bitter melon that could lower sugar. The authors believed the strongest chemical was charantin, which appears to act similarly to insulin. It gets glucose into the cells like insulin does and keeps excess glucose in the liver like insulin and metformin do. It may be that nature developed us to have more than one way to burn glucose, and bitter melon is one of those ways. How to take it My article in 2013 focused on bitter melon tea. Many readers commented that juicing a raw bitter melon worked for them. Others suggested chopping it up and nibbling the pieces for snacks, or using it in cooking. The problem with all those natural ways is the taste. Some people like it, but others hate it. Some readers asked about bitter melon capsules, which appear to work well with no taste problems. Now there are some new ways to get bitter melon. Some might be easier and tastier for you. One group of these products is called Carela. The company sent me some varieties to try, and they tasted good. The tea comes in six flavors. It is made from chopped up bitter melon mixed with tea leaves and “other ingredients.” Carela coolers are made with liquefied bitter melon and slightly sweetened with sucralose, which does not raise blood sugars or insulin levels. The coolers come in peach and cranberry flavors. Carela cofounder Daniel Casanas said it took years of work to create a good-tasting drink while maintaining the health benefits of bitter melon. The ingredients are a trade secret, so I can’t estimate the dose of Momordica you will get in each drink. One user, a woman with Type 1 named Katie Drinkwater, told me she uses Carela to supplement her insulin. She said one 12-ounce bottle lowered her sugars about 100 mg/dl over an hour. A blogger with Type 1 named Libby reported even stronger results. A cooler kept her sugars in normal range for hours even after eating a bagel and cream cheese, which she said had never happened before. Casanas believes bitter melon will be the next kale — soon, everyone will be eating it. I hope he’s right, because Momordica is one of the world’s great healers. It has been found to have powerful anti-cancer properties in mice, according to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. One of our commenters on this site said he started bitter melon tea for glucose control and his adrenal tumor disappeared. Momordica also appears to slow the progression of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. I wonder how such a healing plant evolved, or how we evolved to get so much benefit from it. I also wonder why so few people in the West know about it. Why there has been so little research? Hopefully there will be more soon. Carela is raising money for human studies on bitter melon at this site. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait for large studies if we don’t want to. We’ve got animal and lab studies to give us a hint, and hundreds of thousands of anecdotal reports to get us started. You can read some of these ecstatic reviews here or here or in the comments section of any bitter melon diabetes article. Try it and add your own voice to the chorus. David Spero has been a nurse for 32 years and has lived with multiple sclerosis for 25 years. He is author of two books: The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health When You Have a Chronic Illness (Hunter House 2002), and Diabetes: Sugar-coated Crisis – Who Gets It, Who Profits, and How to Stop It (New Society 2006). He writes for Diabetes Self-Management and Arthritis Self-Management magazines. He is a project director with New Health Partnerships: Improving care by Engaging Patients, a project of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
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Keeping blood sugar levels from rising too high after meals is one of the key goals for people who have diabetes. Now, a small new study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College suggests that, for obese people who have Type 2 diabetes, the order in which they eat their food may be an important tool to this end.
Earlier studies have shown that consuming whey protein prior to a meal or altering the balance of carbohydrate, fat, and protein in a meal can reduce after-meal blood sugar levels. To determine what impact the order in which food is eaten at a meal has on after-meal blood sugar, researchers recruited 11 obese people with Type 2 diabetes who were being treated with the oral medicine metformin. On two separate days a week apart, the participants were given a typical Western meal consisting of vegetables, protein, carbohydrates, and fat in the form of chicken breast, steamed broccoli with butter, lettuce-and-tomato salad with low-fat dressing, ciabatta bread, and orange juice. Blood sugar and insulin levels were checked in the morning prior to eating and again at 30, 60, and 120 minutes after the meal. For the first meal, the subjects were told to eat the carbohydrates first, followed by the protein, vegetables, and fat 15 minutes later. The following week, they were instructed to eat the protein, vegetables, and fat first, followed by the carbohydrates 15 minutes later. The researchers found that, when carbohydrates were eaten last, the participants’ blood sugar levels were significantly lower at the 30-, 60-, and 120-minute after-meal checks (29%, 37%, and 17%, respectively), and insulin levels were substantially lower as well, compared to when the carbohydrates were eaten first. “Based on this finding, instead of saying ‘don’t eat that’ to their patients,’ clinicians might instead say ‘eat this before that,” said lead study investigator Louis Aronne, MD. “While we need to do some follow-up work, based on this finding, patients with Type 2 might be able to make a simple change to lower their blood sugar throughout the day, decrease how much insulin they need to take, and potentially have a long-lasting, positive impact on their health.” Limitations of the study include its small size and a follow-up period of only 120 minutes after each meal to analyze blood sugar and insulin levels. Future studies that involve a longer follow-up to determine the full impact of food order on blood sugar levels are necessary, the authors note. For more information about the research, read the article “Food Order Has Significant Impact on Glucose and Insulin Levels” or see the study’s abstract in the journal Diabetes Care. And to learn more about preventing after-meal blood sugar spikes, see the article “Strike the Spike II,” by 2014 Diabetes Educator of the Year Gary Scheiner. Diane Fennell has been an editor at Diabetes Self-Management magazine since 2003. She is currently the Web Editor for Diabetes Self-Management E-News and DiabetesSelfManagement.com. |