Diabetes Mellitus Information
Diabetes, or Diabetes Mellitus to give it its proper medical name, is a disorder of assimilation. When the pancreases become inactive or atrophied and cease to produce insulin, the body is unable to convert the sugar into energy for the muscles. Its chief symptoms are weakness and loss of weight, great thirst and increase in the amount of urine passed. There is sometimes voracious appetite but the patient. Gradually becomes more and more emaciated. Owing to poor vitality of the tissues, various skin eruptions like boils and carbuncles appear. There may be itching in the groins and eczema. A serious complication could be gangrene of the skin of the feet, beginning with the toes. A curious phenomenon is that the younger the patient, the more rapid is the course of the disease.
Allopathy depends mostly on administration of insulin to, dissolve the sugar in the blood and forbidding starchy and sugary foods to the patients modern science has not been able to pinpoint the real cause of the disease: what is available is only generalizations such as, obese persons are more susceptible to the disease, it attacks males more than females, or that it runs in the families etc. (more…)
by Belinda O’Connell, M.S., R.D., L.D.
More than 1200 plant compounds have been tested for their ability to lower blood sugar levels. Many have been found to contain chemical components that have hypoglycemic activity (the ability to lower blood sugar) when tested in test tubes or in animal models. However, there is very little research on such compounds using human subjects, and what research does exist is generally not of high quality.
A few herbal remedies for diabetes have been tested in humans and have been found to have mild blood-sugar-lowering properties. These compounds have not had very powerful effects and at this time are not felt to be adequate for the management of diabetes alone. The most promising of these botanicals include bitter melon (Momordica charantia), fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum), gurmar (Gymnema sylvestre), goat’s rue (Galega officinalis), bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), ginseng (chiefly Panax), nopal (Opuntia streptacantha), and garlic and onion (Allium sativum and Allium cepa).
Bitter melon
Also called bitter gourd, bitter cucumber, balsam pear, karela, and charantin, bitter melon is the most widely used traditional remedy for diabetes. It is commonly used in Asia, especially in India, and in Africa. Bitter melon is frequently eaten as a vegetable and looks like a misshapen, bumpy cucumber. As a treatment for diabetes, it is typically the juice or an extract of the unripe fruit that is used. Dried or powdered forms of bitter melon are not believed to have the same activity.
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Diabetes incidence has skyrocketed in recent decades due to our dietary and life-style choices - i.e., we are too fat, eat bad foods, and don’t exercise enough. Unfortunately, due to extensive metabolic, hormonal, body-composition shifts that occur after spinal cord injury (SCI), people with SCI are especially prone to develop diabetes. This article discusses various nutritional or botanical approaches that reduce blood-sugar levels in people with this disease.
Overview
Diabetes is characterized by the body’s inability to properly use glucose, our body’s metabolic energy currency. Under healthy conditions, the hormone insulin controls blood-glucose levels. Produced by the pancreas, insulin flows through our blood to various tissues where they bind to cell-surface receptors. This binding initiates a complex biochemical cascade that culminates in glucose uptake into cells to fuel metabolic processes. As blood-glucose levels decline due to cellular uptake, the pancreas shuts down insulin production to prevent hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and, in turn, the liver, the body’s nutrient-processing organ, starts releasing glucose back into the blood.
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