Natural Diabetes Cures - The Bitter Melon

Diabetes (or Diabities) mellitus is a worldwide phenomenon and the numbers of sufferers are growing steadily. It is estimated that by 2010 there will be about 210 million diabetics in this world. The cost of treating this large number of diabetics throughout the world is horrendous. The cost of diabetic treatment not only takes into account the cost of diabetic drugs to treat diabities mellitus directly, but one has also to calculate the costs of treatment of diabetes complication such as kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes. Researchers throughout the world are busy trying to discover new treatments for diabetes which are more effective.

China, with 62.5 million diabetics (equal to that of the United States, Japan and Europe combined), and which faces a doubling of this population of diabetics by 2025, is sending its researchers to collaborate with Australian researchers in trying to find if there is a new treatment for the diabetic disease in the common bitter melon.
Researchers have discovered not one, but 4 different bioactive compounds, which are noted to reduce blood sugar when fed to mice. These compounds increase the uptake of glucose into cells, and thus cause the fall in blood sugar.

China has traditionally relied on herbs,vegetables or plant extracts to manage a host of illnesses, including diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia and gout. Unfortunately there have been no internationally accepted scientific standards of research for most Chinese medicines, whose practitioners have generally relied on treatments and values passed down from generation to generation, and treatments that have been seen to be effective over the generations, but not scientifically analyzed.

This joint study on the benefits of the bitter melon marks one of the few scientific measures to extract, analyze and research active compounds in traditional Chinese medicine to produce an acceptable Western drug for international use.

Testing For Diabetes

It is far better to have the early symptoms of diabities when one is suffering from the disease than not to have any diabetic symptoms at all.  This is because if one does not have symptoms of diabetic disease, one does not feel unwell, there is no visit to the doctor to confirm or diagnose the disease, and one is at great risk of complications occurring due to untreated diabetes.

Symptoms that one should watch out for in early diabities:  sudden weight loss or gain, thirst, increased urination (you wake up several times nightly to pee), increased appetite, tiredness, increased frequency of fungus infections in the body, a reduction of healing time for wounds.

In late diabities, the symptoms will be those of complications – usually these are not reversible.  Thus one may present with poor vision, blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes.

Diagnosis is simple enough.  Go to your doctor after a 12 hour fast.  Get a fasting sugar blood level done on the spot in the clinic.  If the level is more than 5.5mmol per litre, you are diabetic.  Whether you have symptoms or not is immaterial.  Urine tests to diagnose diabetes are unreliable.

A lot can be said for routine testing for diabetes for the general public.  This will detect a great deal of previously undiagnosed diabetics, and early treatment of this serious disease helps a great deal in preventing, or at the very least delaying, the onset of diabetic complications.