Can A New Diabetes Drug Come From Chinese Herbs?

My friends father has diabetes, you also probably know someone dealing with excess body weight and a lack of exercise that has resulted in diabetes.  The numbers are staggering, something like 21 million people currently have diabetes or pre-diabetes. For some countries that would be the entire population and then some.  Scientist are studying just about ever possible angle to discover new drugs to improve insulin levels for diabetics. This recent research published in the British Journal of Pharmacology studies various Chinese herbs. 

“If repeated in humans, all of these changes would be beneficial for people affected by type 2 diabetes or other metabolic diseases associated with insulin resistance,” says lead author Dr Ying Leng, who works in the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai, China.  Many countries have used herbal medicine much longer than America.  When it comes to the use of Chinese herbs and herbal medicine in fact, in both Germany and Japan, herbs and herbal formulas are only prescribed by doctors.  Hmm, why don’t we have this? That’s certainly another blog, back to diabetes.  

“Our work showed that this natural extract from Chinese herbs could point the way to a new way of helping people with type 2 diabetes as well as other metabolic disorders.” says Dr Leng.  There are already many Chinese herb formulas that improve digestion and can help with over eating. Check out Sugar Control Herb Pack here.  

See the study here:

www.brjpharmacol.org/SpringboardWebApp/userfiles/bjp/file/FINAL%20PR%20-%20Leng%20Emodin%20-%20BPH.pdf