A new study was recently published in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, which was pretty promising and exposed that the popular spice ginger is pretty efficient in treating and prevention of diabetes and complications induced by it.
Ginger belongs to the plant family of Zingiberacea, which also includes turmeric, which is the greatest medicinal powerhouse and recently was proven to be hundred percent efficient in preventing type two diabetes in prediabetics. This was published in the American Diabetes Association’s own journal Diabetes Care.
A new study on ginger was conducted, and it was called “The effect of ginger consumption of glycemic status, lipid profile and some inflammatory markers in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus”. In this study were included seventy type two diabetic patients and a double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical examination was done on them. The aim of the examination was to assess the effect of ginger consumption on the glycemic status, the lipid status and certain common inflammatory markers connected to this condition.
The people who participated into this examination were divided into two groups: a ginger group and a control group, and they were receiving 1600 mg of ginger and 1600 mg of placebo every day for twelve weeks. The level of blood sugar and the blood lipids, the prostaglandin E2, the tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) and the C-reactive protein was measured before and after the intervention process in these patients.
After the intervention, the following parameters were reduced considerably in the patient from the group that received ginger compared to the group that received placebo:
- the insulin level
- the fasting plasma glucose
- the HOMA (the homeostatic model assessment), responsible for measuring the insulin resistance and beta-cell function (the pancreatic cells that produce insulin)
- the level of triglycerides
- HbA1C (also known as glycated hemoglobin) – which represents a measurement of how much impairment has been caused to the erythrocytes in the body by sugars, reflective of body wide impairment caused by chronically increased blood sugar
- Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) – a marker of inflammation
- C-reactive protein (CRP) – also a marker of inflammation
- Total cholesterol
No considerable differences in HDL, LDL and TNFα between the two groups have been found (p>0.05).
The conclusions that the researched came to are the following:
Ginger was proved to boost insulin sensitivity and some fractions of the lipid profile, as well as to reduce CRP and PGE2 in patients that suffer from type 2 diabetes. That also proves that ginger can be an efficient cure as well as prevention of diabetes complications.
Of course, there are other studies that have confirmed the same thing, that ginger is very valuable when it comes to diabetes patients. If you put these two search terms: “diabetes” and “ginger” into Pubmed.gov, you will get over 63 results. The database is full of evidence and research on the topic and contains a plenty of gems on its benefit for both type 1 and type-2 diabetes.
Moreover, the researches on turmeric and its major polyphenol curcumin as diabetes aids are even more wide and richer and there are even up to 123 results for the search on the National Library of Medicine’s Pubmed.gov database if you combine the search terms “turmeric” and “diabetes”, and even 252 results for the combination if search terms “curcumin” and “diabetes”.
How much was used?
In the study, 1.6 grams of ginger was used, which is a non-heroic, a regular culinary dose that is about a quarter of a teaspoon. The researchers were giving the participants amounts of 800 milligrams, twice a day, orally, through capsules. This is an indication that using greater doses of this complex plant extract that is categorized as a season is not necessarily better, and actually, can sometimes have opposite effects than expected. The same study, for example, has discovered that using rosemary in lower amounts (up to 750 milligrams) has a better impact on the cognition, while its consumption in larger amounts (6,000 milligrams) interferes with it. This means that using spices in smaller doses, as they have been traditionally used over the years in culinary application, has passed down to us through previous generations as “Recipes”, which are also medical prescriptions, is more effective than using them in higher doses; this is a view that turns conventional pharmacological knowledge as well as practice on its head.
Other Essential Resources for Type 2 Diabetes
The GreenMedInfo.com database has now 350 abstracts on near 180 natural ingredients that have been studied because of their potential value in preventing and treating type 2 diabetes. There are also data on some Problem Substances (like for instance BPA, fructose etc), Therapeutic Actions (including yoga and low carbohydrates diets) and Problematic Actions (like for example vaccination, cooking in microwave oven etc), all connected to this condition in the published study.
There is also a curate health portal on Blood Sugar Problems that contains a collection of both study sections on type 1 and type 2 – diabetes and our reporting on different researches linked to these conditions in greater depth.
