Tag Archives: blood-sugar

Vinegar or Acid Food Helps Blood Sugar Go Down

David Mendosa has for some time been suggesting that using lemon juice or vinegar will benefit blood sugar spikes.  Lemon juice, vinegar, even lactic acid fermented foods as suggested in Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions, will lower blood sugar spikes.  And the fermentation process by lactic acid bacteria lowers carbohydrates in the food that was fermented, which is why plain yogurt is less harmful than the same amount of unfermented milk.  And it adds probiotics to boot, which helps you digest better.

Researcher Carol Johnston f rom the University of Arizona recovered data from the 1940’s and found that 2 tablespoons of vinegar reduces blood sugar spikes at an equivalent rate to much diabetes medication.  It works better with the insulin resistant, but also lowers blood sugar for diabetics.   And it even caused weight loss.

Herbalist David Winston has for years taught that taking bitters before meals will stimulate the liver to produce bile, the gall bladder to release it and the digestive juices to be produced.  It is the taste of the bitters that signals the body from the tongue- taste is more than an aesthetic experience.  What I suggest is that you take a half lime, bite into the bitter peel and squeeze the juice into your water before dinner, which gives you both essential tastes.  Bitterness requires a much smaller amount than sourness to do its work.

Alternatively you can make a salad of bitter greens like radicchio or endive and then dress it with vinegar.  Or take some bitters and eat a pickle before meals.  (The Italians say salt should start a meal to enhance digestion, so you get a two-fer here as well.)

Johnston believes that drinking vinegar is too difficult.  I have found several ways around that since I believe that taste, not just chemical reaction, is involved.  For instance, I mix the unsweetened juice concentrates of blueberry or tart cherry with apple cider vinegar, which makes a decent tasting sour drink.  Balsamic vinegar is also less objectionable, although you must account for the extra carbs as with the juice concentrations.  (Or make your own balsamic vinegar by soaking white pine needles in an equal amount of apple cider vinegar and let sit for a month before using it.)
From Diabetes in Control:

A Spoonful of Vinegar Helps the Sugar Go Down

2 tablespoons of vinegar before a meal even as part of a vinaigrette salad dressing—will dramatically reduce the spike in blood concentrations of insulin and glucose that come after a meal.
A Spoonful of Vinegar Helps the Sugar Go Down
Carol Johnston is a professor of nutrition at Arizona State University’s East campus. When she started developing menus to help prevent and control diabetes, she began with a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. The diet worked amazingly well, but it involved major changes from the way people usually eat. Johnston feared they would give up and start downing Twinkies in no time. She wondered if there was an alternative.

Johnston struck gold while reading through some older studies on diabetes. Actually, she struck vinegar.

Her studies indicate that 2 tablespoons of vinegar before a meal—perhaps, as part of a vinaigrette salad dressing—will dramatically reduce the spike in blood concentrations of insulin and glucose that come after a meal. In people with type 2 diabetes, these spikes can be excessive and can foster complications, including heart disease

In Johnston’s initial study, about one-third of the 29 volunteers had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, another third had signs that they could become diabetic, and the rest were healthy. The scientists gave each participant the vinegar dose or a placebo to drink immediately before they ate a high-carbohydrate breakfast consisting of orange juice, a bagel, and butter. A week later, each volunteer came back for the opposite premeal treatment and then the same breakfast. After both meals, the researchers sampled blood from the participants.

Although all three groups in the study had better blood readings after meals begun with vinegar cocktails, the people with signs of future diabetes—prediabetic symptoms—reaped the biggest gains. For instance, vinegar cut their blood-glucose rise in the first hour after a meal by about half, compared with readings after a placebo premeal drink.


A few tablespoons of vinegar prior to a meal—such as part of an oil-and-vinegar salad dressing—could benefit people with diabetes or at high risk of developing the disease.PhotoDisc

In contrast, blood-glucose concentrations were only about 25 percent better after people with diabetes drank vinegar. In addition, people with prediabetic symptoms ended up with lower blood glucose than even healthy volunteers, after both groups drank vinegar.

In these tests, vinegar had an effect on volunteers’ blood comparable to what might be expected from antidiabetes drugs, such as metformin, the researchers reported January in Diabetes Care. A follow-up study has now turned up an added—and totally unexpected—benefit from vinegar: moderate weight loss.

Both findings should come as welcome news during this season when sweet and caloric treats taunt diabetics, who face true health risks from indulging in too many carbs.

Johnston was looking for possible diet modifications that would make meals less risky for people with diabetes. While reviewing research published earlier by others, she ran across reports from about 2 decades ago that suggesting that vinegar limits glucose and insulin spikes in a person’s blood after a meal.

A few research groups had conducted limited follow-up trials. For instance, Johnston points to a 2001 paper in which researchers at Lund University in Sweden evaluated pickles—cucumbers preserved in vinegar—as a dietary supplement to lower the blood-sugar rise in healthy people after a meal. The Swedish team, led by Elin M. Östman, reported that pickles dramatically blunted the blood-sugar spike after a high-carb breakfast. Fresh cukes didn’t.

“I became really intrigued,” Johnston says, because adding vinegar to the diet would be simple “and wouldn’t require counting how many carbs you ate.” At first, she attempted to replicate findings by others, focusing specifically on people with diabetes or prediabetic symptoms.

When these individuals showed clear benefits from vinegar after a single meal, Johnston’ group initiated a trial to evaluate longer-term effects. It also explored vinegar’ effect on cholesterol concentrations in blood. The Arizona State scientists had hypothesized that by preventing digestion of carbs in the stomach, vinegar might cause carbohydrate molecules to instead ferment in the colon, a process that signals the liver to synthesize less cholesterol.

So, in one trial, Johnston had half of the volunteers take a 2-tablespoon dose of vinegar prior to each of two meals daily for 4 weeks. The others were told to avoid vinegar. All were weighed before and after the trial.

As it turns out, cholesterol values didn’t change in either group. To Johnston’ surprise, however, “here was actually about a 2-pound weight loss, on average, over the 4 weeks in the vinegar group.” In fact, unlike the control group, none in the vinegar cohort gained any weight, and a few people lost up to 4 pounds. Average weight remained constant in the group not drinking vinegar.

Johnston would now like to repeat the trial in a larger group of individuals to confirm the finding, but that study is currently on hold.

Why? To no one’s astonishment, the study volunteers didn’t like drinking vinegar straight—even flavored, apple-cider vinegar. Indeed, Johnston says, “I would prefer eating pickled foods or getting . . . vinegar in a salad dressing.”

Now, the scientists are developing a less objectionable, encapsulated form of vinegar and testing its efficacy. Although there are commercially available vinegar dietary supplements, Johnston notes that they “don’t appear to contain acetic acid,” and based on studies by others, she suspects that’s the antidiabetic ingredient in the vinegar.
Diabetes Care Jan, 2005

Sources:

Diabetes in Control.  A Spoonful of Vinegar Helps the Blood Sugar Go Down

David Mendosa. Acidic Foods: Another Way to Control Your Blood Sugar

Liljeberg H, Bjorck I. “Delayed gastric emptying rate may explain improved glycaemia in healthy subjects to a starchy meal with added vinegar.” Eur J Clin Nutr. 1998 May;52(5):368-71.

Liljeberg HG, Lonner CH, Bjorck IM. “Sourdough fermentation or addition of organic acids or corresponding salts to bread improves nutritional properties of starch in healthy humans.” J Nutr. 1995 Jun;125(6):1503-11.

Brighenti F, Castellani G, Benini L, Casiraghi MC, Leopardi E, Crovetti R, Testolin G. “Effect of neutralized and native vinegar on blood glucose and acetate responses to a mixed meal in healthy subjects.” Eur J Clin Nutr. 1995 Apr;49(4):242-7.

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See Also:

Fermented Blueberry Drink Prevents Diabetes

Our Symbionts, Ourselves

Natural Remedies for Indigestion

How to Make Miso

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Caffeine Halts Progression of Alzheimers

More research showing that coffee is not the brew of the devil. Not only does it prevent Alzheimer’s, it stopped the progression of the disease.  But a few caveats: it was caffeine, not coffee; it’s an awfully lot; it was mice, not people and no one asked them if they were jittery.Coffee mouse

From the Times of London:

Daily caffeine dose may delay progress of Alzheimer’s, researchers say

Hannah Devlin

Three large cups of coffee a day could help to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease and even reverse the condition, researchers say.

A daily dose of caffeine can suppress the degenerative processes in the brain that can lead to confusion and memory loss, a study in mice suggests.

Although drinking coffee has previously been linked to a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s, this is the first study to suggest that caffeine can directly target the disease itself.

Alzheimer’s occurs when sticky clumps of abnormal protein in the brain called beta-amyloid build up to form plaques, impairing cognitive function. But mice with a rodent equivalent of the disease showed a 50 per cent reduction in levels of amyloid protein in their brains after scientists spiked their drinking water with caffeine.

The change was reflected in their behaviour as they developed better memories and quicker thinking. In the study, published today in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers from the University of South Florida studied 55 mice that had been genetically engineered to develop dementia symptoms identical to those of Alzheimer’s as they aged. Before treatment the mice, which were aged 18 to 19 months — about 70 years in human terms — had performed poorly in the memory tests.

Half the animals were given a daily dose of caffeine in their drinking water — equivalent to a human consuming about six espresso shots or 500mg of pure caffeine — while the other half continued to drink ordinary water. By the end of the two-month study, the caffeine-drinking mice were performing far better on tests of memory and thinking than mice given water. Their memories were as sharp as those of healthy older mice without dementia.

The scientists found that when the mice drank caffeinated water their blood levels of beta amyloid protein fell quickly. More importantly, the same effect occurred in the brain. Almost half the abnormal protein previously seen when the brains of Alzheimer’s mice were examined had vanished after two months.

The researchers hope that caffeine could present a safe, inexpensive treatment for dementia.

Professor Gary Arendash, a memory and ageing specialist who led the latest research, said that he wished to conduct human patient trials as soon as possible.

“The findings provide evidence that caffeine could be a viable treatment for established Alzheimer’s disease and not simply a protective strategy,” he said.

A study in 2002 found that people who consumed caffeine in mid-life were 60 per cent less likely to develop the disease.

About 417,000 people in the UK suffer from Alzheimer’s, and numbers are steadily rising. There is currently no cure and although drugs can help stabilise the condition, they are not widely available on the NHS until patients have advanced-stage disease and their effectiveness is relatively unpredictable from person to person.

Taking 500mg of caffeine in tablet form would be safe for most patients and would have relatively few side-effects, Professor Arendash said, although it is not clear how the dosage would translate from mice to humans.

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said that it was too early to say whether coffee or caffeine supplements could help Alzheimer’s patients.

“With no cure yet, research into treatments that could help people with Alzheimer’s is vital. [But] we need to do more research to find out whether this effect will be seen in people,” she said.

Getting perked up

How to get 500mg of caffeine a day:

2 x 250mg caffeine pills

3 x large espresso-based coffees

6 x cans of Red Bull

14 x cans of Coca-Cola

15 x cups of tea

7kg (16 lb) of chocolate

Source: US Food and Drug Administration, University of South Florida

See also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8132122.stm
Excerpt:

When the mice were tested again after two months, those who were given the caffeine performed much better on tests measuring their memory and thinking skills and performed as well as mice of the same age without dementia. Those drinking plain water continued to do poorly on the tests.

In addition, the brains of the mice given caffeine showed nearly a 50% reduction in levels of the beta amyloid protein, which forms destructive clumps in the brains of dementia patients. Further tests suggested caffeine affects the production of both the enzymes needed to produce beta amyloid. The researchers also suggest that caffeine suppresses inflammatory changes in the brain that lead to an overabundance of the protein.

See also:  Science Daily article with citations and the mouse picture above.

See Related Posts:

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Caffeine Halts Progression of Alzheimer’s

Simple Ways to Support Brain Function

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Coffee Beats Statins in Reducing Diabetes Inflammation

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