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Bitter Melon (Gourd) tea

M

McGints11

Active Member
Messages
31
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Hi,
I have been drinking Bitter Melon (or Gourd) Tea for about a month and the results are great. I am also on the LCHF diet. I am VERY strict about my carb intake; preferably less than 20 grams per day, and I also eat lots of meat. Through diet alone, my readings are about 6.2 to 6.9 mmol two hours after a meal.

However, the tea basically takes a full mmol off my reading (e,g from 6.4 to 5.4). I drink a cup of the tea after a meal. It does not take long to start helping my readings, maybe half a day. Once it kicks in, my readings go down to the 5.2 to 5.9 range two hours after a meal.

The tea is cheap, about $AUD3.00 for a box of 20. The taste is not unpleasant, maybe a bit oily. Certainly drinkable, but you would not serve it for afternoon tea!

Enjoy

Peter
 

It's nowhere near as good at this as Metformin, a drug whose side effects are known and not too bad. There's not been a lot of research on Bitter Melon and it's not certain it works because the research has been of a poor quality. It would be really hard to know if it was the LCHF diet or the tea that was lowering your BG for a single individual because there are so many other factors that can change it.
 

Hi,

Thanks for your cynicism, but I am confident of my comments. I maintain a strict diet and keep a limited menu of foods. I also keep meticulous records of my BGL tests. My original comment is based on many months on a LCHF diet and 1 month with the same diet and bitter melon tea. My results are based on a day-by-day, meal-by-meal and food-by-food basis. At $AUD3.00 a box and not involving any drugs, it is definitely worth trying.
 
Interesting thanks for posting
I eat a few slices ca 10 gr of bitter melon each day .and it's more effective then the
Pills. I will look for the tea.in the health food store
 
Sorry, what do you think it is you're taking if it's not a drug? Drugs are just a purer form of supplement, without all the unnecessary and potentially harmful things. Just like a drug, it has serious side effects and that's why it's not a good idea to self-prescribe or recommend it to others. Not safe during pregnancy, as has been known to cause abortion in animals, can cause abdominal cramps, diarrhea, anaemia, not safe before or after surgery. Just because it's 'natural' doesn't mean it's any safer, that's a very simplistic assumption.

Also, a one-person trial of a substance doesn't prove anything, however confident you are, that's not how medicine works.

If drug companies did trials like that and then started recommending drugs to people based on that, there would be an outcry, and rightly so.
 
Interesting, thanks.

I believe @Oldvatr did some similar self testing and found benefits too, but I don't remember all the details. His records were meticulous.
 
Hi,

There are two reasons why I like this forum:
1) The idea has been to share ideas and experiences
2) I have always found English people to be incredibly positive and diverse in their thinking

There are warnings on the boxes and, if people are inclined to read this blog-site, they would also be inclined to read these warnings. Like me, most diabetics that I have met naturally tell their doctor what they are taking.

I was just sharing what I had experienced without writing an essay on the topic.

I am sure that you would prefer to wait until drugs are made from the compounds of bitter melon (gourd). If so, you might enjoy this article. Oh, and when you read it, you might like to note what the research scientists said about its side effects. http://www.garvan.org.au/news/news/a-tonne-of-bitter-melon-produces-sweet-results-for-diabetes

Enjoy the positive side of your personality.

Cheers
 
Brunneria said:
Interesting, thanks.

I believe @Oldvatr did some similar self testing and found benefits too, but I don't remember all the details. His records were meticulous.
Click to expand...
Hi, yes I did note some success with BM (and also Gymnema Sylvestre). I reported my findings in another thread in the Alternative Treatments thread (this section)
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/sharing-my-experience-of-bitter-melon.88671/

In addition I shared a graph of my results as follows:
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/my-personal-journey.100931/#post-1150417

To summarise, I did have a sudden and significant drop in bgl while taking the BM, and it surprised me at the way it suddenly kicked in. When I stopped my trial, my bgl rose again immdiately, so the effect was due to the BM.

But, I was reading up about LCHF diet around this time, and my next trial with Gymnema Sylvestre was hijacked by me changing diet to LCHF which distorted my results. I have dropped both of these supplements, and I am now using LCHF as my primary means of controlling my bgl (with reduced oral meds)

I am getting the same results thst I got from BM but without the expense, and without the gut reaction that came with it. If LCHF loses its effectivity, then I have BM to turn to. It may be that the BM reduces my insulin resistance (fatty liver) and prepared the way for my diet to work as it does, but then again, others are suceeding with just the diet alone. Certainly BM is used effectively as a diabetes treatment in India, so does have a good track record, but no formal RCT studies to offer as 'proof'. It remains in the 'quack medicine' cupboard as far as NHS is concerned.
 
We are getting the exact same comments and adversity in respect of LCHF as was levelled at Atkins etc, and in the past to the spinning jenny. So you are saying we must touch our forelocks and submit to NHS regulation that is based on faulty and discredited statistics?

Yes there are some well documented contra indications (e.g.WebMD owned and run by Boots) and this info is readily researchable by all who can access this forum. It has also been noted in various threads where BM is discussed.
 
Hi
Fresh Bitter gourd is also used as Indian veg curried dish, it's widely available from most Indian supermarkets (also available pre cooked tinned & frozen - seen this frozen in tesco) and has been known for its medicinal qualities in india for centuries.
 
Exactly the same reasons apply to the low-fat 'healthy' plate as to Bitter Melon - the research is very poor. The reason I'm on LCHF is that the research is more up to date and of good quality - and where it contradicts the fairly discredited healthy plate diet there are good reasons why it contradicts it.

To me LCHF diet for diabetics is one of those quantum shifts in medicine, where the old guard are just fighting a rearguard action to maintain their position despite an insurmountable onslaught - like the H Pylori bacteria found to be the main cause of stomach ulcers. Despite excellent science, it still took a good few years for all doctors to accept it.

Bitter Melon tea isn't a revolution in diabetes treatment - it might well have some effect, but the evidence is of poor quality, and the effect found from it is inferior to the effect of metformin and so why would you take it, unless you believed that 'natural' is somehow always better than 'chemical' which is a ludicrous, Luddite position.
 
The key word in that headline is 'promising'. Salysilic acid was a promising ingredient of willow bark, but gave you gastritis, so we developed aspirin from it which doesn't.

It's really not about negativity or positivity or diverse thinking, it's about rationality and thinking scientifically, instead of allowing our built in biases to influence our thinking. Medicine is undergoing a transition from doing what doctor think is right, to evidence-based medicine. There have been some surprises - like a popular and effective surgery to alleviate angina turns out to be a placebo effect.

Science is simply the best way to get the true picture and remove our human failings.
 

If you are happy with your tablets that is great, no-one is saying do not take them. If people try natural remedies and have success, why do you have to howl it down? It is about being positive, it is about trying, it is about sharing ideas. It is not about shooting down the ideas of others because they do not accord with your approach.

Some people, like me, prefer not to take tablets unless we have no other reasonable choice. There was once a product, backed up with sound medical research, to help women with morning sickness. It was called Thalidomide. This was one of many examples of why some people prefer not to take tablets if there is a reasonable natural alternative.

If people report really good results with alternative approaches, then maybe the medical profession could be inspired to conduct more research into those ideas.

Metformin was developed about 50 years ago and it is a great success. But that does not mean that if Bitter Melon is not as good that it cannot serve a useful purpose.

And to be a bit picky, a "Luddite" usually refers to a person that is against new technology, or maybe in your case, new ideas.
 
Thalidomide is a fantastic example of why more, higher quality research into a potentially useful product should be done, to find out its side-effects. Not less.

I'm not 'howling it down' , I'm not 'being negative', I'm urging caution, like the fantastic woman in the US who refused to license Thalidomide because insufficient testing had been done, despite all those people clamouring for it to be released, so saving the US from the disaster that befell many other countries.
 
Erm. An ancient remedy that was a natural plant based medication was Goats Rue or French Lily. This was refined into a pill form and renamed Glucophage. We recognise it as Metformin. How do you think it was discovered? By a scientist in a laboratory and some rats overfed heavily a la foie gras? or people reporting it as individual success stories and apothecaries taking it up and making preparations for others to try. I think your logic is too simplistic.
 
I have been low carb for 5 months, and using freestyle libre, I'm certain I get lower post-prandial readings with bitter melon.

I take the capsules (karelobetic brand).

Recently saw a diabetes specialist, who said high doses of bitter melon can cause liver problems, so I'm limiting myself to 1 or 2 capsules a day. However, I wasn't convinced by his view, and I'm satisfied from research that is out there that it is safe.
 
Certainly safer than that other stuff you were playing with the other day. At least BM has been tested even though it wasn't a gold standard RCT as some here wait for.
 
No money in it for big pharma, so we'll never get a decent trial. The anecdotal evidence is good enough for me.
 
Everytime someone mentions bitter melon, I think of bitter lemon and feel slightly sick lol. My grandparents used to practically force feed me it every Christmas because the thought I liked it! Lol


Sent from my iPad using DCUK Forum
 
Hi,

Thanks. Your original "chapters" on BM were the reason that I started to look into it. So, thank you.

If you were not aware, BM in a tea form kicks in within about 6 hours and the cost is dramatically cheaper than the pill form. I just drink a cup with every meal. I have found on many occasions that my post prandial reading is lower than my pre-prandial reading. Of course, I don't have your skills to be able to isolate the reason as being purely the BM, so there are many factors at play. What I can say is that just being on a LCHF diet rarely achieves the same outcome.

The tea does give me a very slight feeling of nausea, but this does not concern me as it goes away within 10 minutes. It may affect others a bit harder as I do have a cast iron gut.

Now, I am just going to have to look into Gymnema Sylvestre.

Cheers
 
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