Analysis of the effect of different herb plants locally known to be effective in reducing blood sugar to see if the effects are true to this instance.

There are several people in my life including my own father who has struggled with diabetes, all of them have to be strict on what they consume and how much and it has become part of their lives. As I have been around them one a topic that I have come across several times was the consumption of different type of known herbs as a means of reducing blood glucose levels, and many claimed that they have had experience managing their glucose levels through such means. Although this is interesting I have been a skeptic of this as I have not seen any specific individual who only relied on such methods over traditional medicine. So I was naturally curious to explore the potential of some of these known herbs and spices in the name of research to understand their effects on reducing once blood glucose levels. Although i am not a diabetic my self my curiosity led me to explore different avenues in life to better understand myself and the truth of some of the foods that we eat.

I need to put this out their before I go any further, this research is purely out of my own curiosity to understand the effect of such natural remedies on reducing the blood glucose levels hence this is not to say that even if they are successful in reducing that it would be a remedy for any type of diabetes. All in all this only but a curios research and I am not a medical professional to advice on taking this any of this as a cure for diabetes.

What I hope to explore through this 3 stage journey is to

• Explore the effect of herbs in reducing blood glucose levels when consumed on empty stomach
• Explore the effect of herbs before or after meal if it reduces the glucose conversion post meal
• Explore the natural cycle of how these types of remedies may effect the body
  
  

For all of this I am making my self the lab rat like I always have in the name of understanding for better. My hope is that this will help some one make an informed decision on types of subject which I am trying to explore here and may even lead to useful finding that can help change lives.

So getting on to the tools of use I am using a continuous glucose monitor, for the current test I am using a freestyle Libre 3 device. Such devices are not sold locally and I have purchased them online in the past, this has become very difficult recently due to some of the government measures on taxing and importation of goods.
Continuous glucose monitors are invasive devises where it has to be attached to your body and will provide data 24 hours for upto 14 days into your app, these devices monitor the body’s blood sugar levels by measuring persons interstitial fluid (you can find more about such devices through this article – https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/continuous-glucose-monitoring-cgm)

I am going to test the effectiveness of five remedies in its purest form to see if these would help reduce blood glucose conversion after a meal and if they can reduce blood glucose levels when taken without any meal. In order to test for this I will be consuming a consistent set meal (my break first is sacrificed for this). Once I have established the baseline each following day I will be testing a single ingredient at a time.

I will follow the below testing protocol every day for five days

• Test 1 – Wake up —> 5.5 km jog —> consume breakfast–> consume set amount of ingredient extract

• Test 2 – 4-6 hours after lunch when the glucose levels have stabilized consume the same amount of extract as before on empty stomach
  

During the testing period this will be my breakfast

• 3 pcs of toast (apx. 87g)
• 2 boiled eggs (apx. 83 g)
• slice of processed cheese
• 250 ml of milk tea (tea boiled and milk is added without any sugar)

Water is consumed as normal in total about 2l -2.5l per day

Testing ingredients

Following ingredients were tested in the given amount

On the first day I established the a baseline glucose results by consuming the food and this was revalidated by repeating the baseline test on the last day to ensure constancy in pattern.

Day 1 testing – Fresh moringa leaves

• 20g of moringa leaves was blended with mild warm water and consumed right after breakfast to check against the previous day’s results.
• As a control to see if the blood glucose level would go down, I consumed another 20 g in the evening without a meal on a 6-hour empty stomach

Based on the chart results, it did not show any positive impact on the blood glucose levels when moringa was consumed right after a meal; there was a single large spike compared to dual peaks observed in the reference reading. However, when the area is considered, taking moringa leaves did not show any impact on cutting down food glucose absorption.

When analyzing the empty stomach moringa consumption, there was a slight dip in the blood glucose level; however, it was difficult to directly attribute it to this, as the glucose level was reducing prior to drinking moringa and then soon gained after. Hence, the observation is that taking moringa on its own would not affect blood glucose levels or reduce carbohydrate conversion to glucose.