Humble, Pesky Herb Rescues Blood Sugar At Lightning Speed

In India, they call it madhumeha, or "sugar urine."

In the U.S., we call it diabetes.

Either way, it's a blood sugar nightmare that can lead to heart disease, kidney failure, nerve damage, blindness, and more.

Everyone knows someone with diabetes because it is epidemic in the United States. Over 20 million people suffer from it. And the cost of this disease? A whopping $132 billion per year - with $92 billion of that going for prescription drugs.

It's a different story in rural India. There, in areas where natural medicine is still practiced, they serve up a special type of gourd when blood sugar problems arise.

Could that be why only 2-3% of India's vast rural population - 750 million people - has diabetes? In contrast, in the big cities of India, where modern diet and modern medicine are more common, 12% of adults are diabetic - the largest diabetic population in the world.1

Coccinia Cordifolia

That's the scientific name for the gourd plant that grows like a weed in India, Thailand, and Hawaii. It's also known by many other names, including kundru, ivy gourd, and tindora. In addition to the fruit, the leaves can also be cooked and eaten or dried and brewed into a tea.

This tropical plant is in the same family as bitter melon. It tends to spread wildly, vining in all directions and producing a small green fruit that turns red as it ripens. In the southern United States and parts of Hawaii, it is considered an invasive pest.

Traditional herbal medicine uses coccinia when blood sugar becomes a problem. It not only relieves the symptoms of excess blood sugar, but it is also safe to consume and has no known side effects.

Researchers have been studying the herb to see just how it works to control blood sugar.
Speedy results...

Studies on coccinia were quick to confirm the its benefits. Dr. Rebecca Kuriyan, a researcher at the Institute of Population Health and Clinical Research in Bangladore, led an experiment on 60 adults with newly detected type 2 diabetes. All were between the ages of 35 and 60.

Half the participants were given one gram of coccinia extract each day and half were given a placebo. No drugs were used in the double-blind study.

After 90 days, those who had taken the herbal extract had a 16% drop in fasting blood glucose levels, while those who got the placebo saw their levels rise. After-meal blood glucose levels in the herb group fell by almost 20%.2

Other studies have recorded similar results, prompting one researcher to comment: "The magnitude of change seen with the herb was similar to that with a conventional drug."3 Coccinia works as well as insulin to remove sugar from the blood.

It's also important to note that all of these studies took place over a very short period of time - just 6 to 12 weeks. Still, the results were almost immediate! That means coccinia works very quickly in the body to get blood sugar under control.