Finding Natural Treatments for Diabetes

Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness among adults in the United States. Thousands of people are blinded every year due to this disease. Hundreds of thousands of limb amputations have been done on patients to save their lives because of diabetes. And the majority of patients in hospitals that are waiting for liver transplants are in that terrible position because of diabetes. Diabetes, left untreated, can lead to impotency, nerve loss, hypertension, and many more serious diseases. So, it's no surprise that diabetes is considered one of the most lethal disease that we are living with today.

Usually when people are diagnosed with diabetes, their doctor prescribes one or more pharmaceutical drugs to help them control their disease. But many people are looking for natural diabetes cures as well. Here are a few that have been used through the centuries:

Bitter gourd - you can find this tropical plant in many health stores. It's also goes by the names bitter melon and kerela. It was originally grown in the soils of Southeast Asia, China, and Africa. Some health articles recommend taking one tablespoon of bitter gourd daily, on an empty stomach, to reduce your blood glucose levels. Alternatively, you can cook it and eat it as a vegetable along with your meal.

Cinnamon - this dried and ground bark has been used as a natural diabetes treatment for hundreds of years. People with diabetes have difficulty processing the glucose in their blood stream. In clinical trials, cinnamon appears to assist the body's fat cells in utilizing the glucose in the bloodstream which is why it appears to be so effective. Anything that helps the body to process glucose will be beneficial in normalizing blood glucose levels.

Chromium supplements - many wellness gurus conjecture that the soils that crops are grown in these days is seriously lacking in a lot of the trace elements that at one time naturally resided in the earth. One of these trace elements is chromium, which in some tests has shown to provide diabetes patients with substantial improvement from their diabetes symptoms. Chromium is believed to help the body produce insulin as well as to help the insulin already in the body to perform at a greater level of efficiency. As of today, however, there has been no government regulated trials to test the effectiveness of chromium on diabetes.

Kino - This medicinal herb has been used in Indian medicines for diabetes treatment for a long time as a treatment for diabetes.

Exercise - type 2 diabetes has become a real epidemic in this country. Many health experts lay the problem directly on the combination of them eating too much fast foods and lack of exercise. A theory, that many doctors subscribe to, is that too much body fat leads to diabetes in those that have a family history of diabetes. They believe that it is something about the excess fat that triggers the inability of the body to produce insulin or to use that insulin to process the foods they eat.

There's no doubt that tested pharmaceutical drugs are effective in treating diabetes. With natural herbs and supplements, however, there's usually no documented history of their effectiveness. Therefore, before taking any herbal treatment for diabetes, make sure you talk it over with your primary health care physician first.