Bitter melon could help diabetes sufferers
New research has revealed that bitter melon could be used to help sufferers of Type 2 diabetes.
Used as a traditional Chinese medicine, scientists from Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica studied the effects of the vegetable, Science Daily reports.
Professor David James, the director of the Diabetes and Obesity Programme at Garvan, stated that the researchers looked at the molecular properties of the food.
“By isolating the compounds we believe to be therapeutic, we can investigate how they work together in our cells,” he said.
Also involved in the study was Dr Jiming Ye, who explained a further benefit of the vegetable, saying: “The advantage of bitter melon is that there are no known side effects.”
A discovery by the University of Birmingham earlier this month suggested that hydrophobin found in mushrooms could be used to make a new range of low-fat products.
