Bitter melon (Momordica charantia) lowers blood sugar and lipid levels and reduces obesity. Plus, you won’t crave sugary snacks as much after this “bitter gourd” balances your sweet tooth palate. Bitter melon is a traditional medicinal food enjoyed throughout Asia, Africa, and South America. People consume it regularly to prevent and treat diabetes, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, and obesity. You can easily harness bitter melon’s health benefits with the balancing tea blend, NutraGlycemia.
Bitter melon contains:
- Vitamins: A and C
- Minerals: Zinc, Potassium, Iron, and Folate
- Antioxidants: Catechin, Gallic Acid, Epicatechin, and Chlorogenic acid
- Glycosides
- Saponins
Lowers Blood Sugar
The fruit is hypoglycemic, lowering blood sugar levels and preventing spikes. Over the centuries, bitter melon has proved a very valuable medicine for preventing and treating pre-diabetes and type II diabetes. After you eat a meal with carbohydrates, your body breaks the carbohydrates into sugars, which increases blood sugar. This should trigger the release of insulin, the hormone responsible for regulating blood sugar levels. However, people with type II diabetes are either insulin-resistant or their pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin. Bitter melon behaves like insulin, lowering blood sugar levels and preventing blood sugar spikes after meals.
The fruit improves the way the body’s tissues use sugar; its properties improve sugar (glucose) metabolism, causing more glucose to enter the cells instead of remaining in the blood. It prevents your body from turning a meal’s nutrients into extra glucose and releasing that glucose into the blood. Bitter melon prevents glucose from being absorbed into the alimentary canal. It also helps your body process and store glucose in the liver, muscles, and fat. The pancreas benefits from bitter melon supplementation, strengthened in its ability to synthesize and release hormones. Bitter melon also improves insulin-sensitivity and glucose-tolerance when these conditions are induced by a high fat diet. All these actions cumulatively lower blood sugar levels.
If you’re taking a drug for your type II diabetes, such as metformin, monitor your blood sugar with extra care when supplementing with bitter melon, as the fruit and drug together can lower blood sugar too much.
Lowers Lipid Levels
Bitter melon lowers lipid levels, reducing high cholesterol. Cholesterol is a lipid. It comes in the form of LDL (“bad cholesterol”) and HDL (“good cholesterol”). Over time, high LDL cholesterol can induce cardiovascular disease. Bitter melon lowers LDL cholesterol but does not lower HDL cholesterol, which is healthy.
Reduces Obesity and Lowers Inflammation
Bitter melon reduces obesity by preventing unhealthy body weight gain. It facilitates weight loss, particularly visceral fat loss, that is caused by a high fat diet. This effect is thanks to the way it modulates fat metabolizing kinases by increasing fatty acid oxidation.
The fruit’s antioxidants lower inflammation, particularly a very dangerous kind: obesity-induced chronic inflammation of adipose tissue. This kind of inflammation often leads to the metabolic diseases type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease, as well as further unhealthy weight gain. Bitter foods like bitter melon can be acquired tastes, but they help balance the modern, sugar-addicted palate. After enjoying a cup of NutraGlycemia or a few slices of bitter melon, a person may find sugary foods sickly-sweet rather than irresistible. This can also help manage one’s body weight.
More about Bitter Melon
The bitter melon fruit grows on an annual, tropical vine that can grow sixteen feet long. Before ripening, the long, cone-shaped fruit is light green with a white pith. As it ripens, the exterior becomes very bitter, and the pith becomes sweet and red. There are two varieties of bitter melon. Indian bitter melon is warty and ridged. Chinese bitter melon is smoother and less bitter. The plant’s Latin binomial Momordica charantia means “bitter gourd.
