Got questions about navigating spirit with diabetes? You came to the right berth: Ask D'Mine!, our weekly Q&A column by veteran type 1 and diabetes source Wil Dubois.

Sometimes it's knockout to separate fact from fiction on substances that supposedly help lower blood sugar. Today we're speaking spicy and sour…

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Joel, typewrite 2 from Illinois, writes: I've heard a lot people say that unpeasant-smelling, bitter, or naughty foods help bring blood glucose down. Is there any truth to this?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: There's no shortage of studies on the blood sugar-cloudy effects of sour, bitter, or savory foods—simply they lean to be a scra incomplete, maybe because there's little motivation to inquiry medical interventions that can't be monetized. What do I signify past sketchy? Dr. Fr. Baby Joseph of Malankara Catholic College, writing a summary of nutritionary remedy search in the Asian Pacific Ocean Journal of Tropical Disease, said it second-best: "Despite the rich information from biochemical and protozoa-like studies, available clinical information as reviewed in the present article are oft flawed by small sample size, want of control and needy take designs."

Which is a nice way of saying that there's much of crap science along the study. Like I said, sketchy.

Still with this much smoke, there could be a burn down. Catch a hosepipe and a shovel and let's take a aspect.

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At least 1 element of spicy food has been extensively researched: capsaicin, which is the Pow! element in many chili peppers. Capsaicin has been under the microscope for a long time, literally. One of the earliest studies of capsaicin was published in 1978 in the journal Food and Cosmetics Toxicology, and it showed that capsaicin increased glucose absorption in the intensities. At least in rats. And hamsters. Maybe. The work was in vitro, pregnant the tissue or cells were removed from the critters questionable and studied in petri dishes.

In vitro is Italic language for "in looking glass."

It's a long stretch out from puke cells in a chalk dish responding easily to a trifoliated, to the idea that you as well should eat that compound.

Nevertheless, a later study, outgoing of the Hoi polloi's Republic of China, looked at living sick rats. The canvas compared capsaicin to a "nonpungent capsaicin analogue" called Capsiate. How did the two smokestack adequate to each other? The analog didn't do arsenic well, but the researchers claim that both the natural substance and the analog increased insulin levels (which shouldn't be possible in a T1D rat) while a reorganisation in the glucose transport proteins also further reduced line of descent glucose levels.

That's interesting. But the Formosan researchers also claimed that chile peppers "exhibit antiobesity, anticancer, antidiabetic, and pain- and itch relieving effects." Hmmmm…. Sounds like good ol' universal Snake Oil to me. I get suspicious when one compound is supposed to cure all ills. But mayhap that's just me.

Luckily, non all spicy nutrient research is done on lab rats. There are a smattering of human studies, but the results are interracial. 1 of the first took healthy folks, loaded them up with sugar, added capsaicin, and found that information technology made no difference. Another study took 44 women with physiological condition diabetes and full one-half of them full phase of the moon of chilli peppers for a calendar month then compared their glucose, insulin, and other blood chemistry. The researchers claim that the stuffed pepper ladies had reinforced postprandial (after meal) blood sugars. Like I said, heterogenous results.

Moving on, it's time to start out bitter. Apparently one of the bitterest foods knocked out in that location is Momordica Charantia—the bitter melon vine. Across Asia, bitter melon has a well-entrenched historic role in folk medicine, and leastwise unity decently designed field of study found that large doses of piercingly melon lowered blood glucose, simply the effect was coy — less than a single metformin pill. But, comparable much of the scientific discipline in this realm, a assorted team got different results, which is to say, no results at all. So pick your poison. Oh, right. Comprise aware that also much bitter melon is poison itself. Many of its elements are venomous in mass.

As to sour foods, I couldn't find much of anything left-slanting on the subject of sour food lowering blood glucose, which ISN't as well startling, conferred that the most common sour foods—such as citrus and some dairy products—are also intoxicated in carbohydrates. If they did have glucose-lowering properties, their own natural sugars would overwhelm the positive personal effects. That's not to say some kinda medicine couldn't personify developed from the glucose-lowering compounds—if they exist—only feeding a field goal of lemons and limes isn't likely to help your blood kale. Inactive, at any rate information technology would keep scurvy at bay.

Sol not to rain on your promenade, but the best of the sketchy evidence suggests that if rancid, unpleasant, or spicy foods do, in fact, better stemma sugar, the effect is slight at best, leastways in terms of pragmatic real-world applications. This mightiness explain why varying studies get varying results. If you're mensuration a small difference, small errors lav cu the results. Only if that's the case, why are a portion of people saying that these foods lower rake sugar?

I have a theory on that.

When it comes to blue food, how big a plate can you eat before your tongue melts? How much water do you take in to guzzle in the meantime to undertake to trouble the fire in your mouth? And we have a saying in English about something being a bitter pill to swallow. There's only so much culinary bitterness we put up support, and it's non much.

So one possibility is that when feeding spicy and bitter foods we tend to deplete less. And in the suit of really spicy foods, we also consume a fair sum of money of compensatory liquid, which takes up space in our stomachs, satieting our appetites with even to a lesser extent food volume.

And that combination can dead lower blood sugar, leastways for those with type 2 diabetes.

Here's how IT deeds: Most type 2s unmoving produce some insulin, but generally not enough to insure their blood sugar. One result to this problem is to take medicine to suck in the extra dinero out of their rip. Only another solution is to simply thin out the intake of kale to a level contemptible decent that whatsoever insulin carry out stiff is adequate to the tax.

In other lyric, for a type 2, lowering the carbohydrate ingestion may let the limited remaining insulin in their bodies catch up. And spicy and vitriolic foods—regardless of whatever magic medicinal properties they may own in small quantities—might execute that by the simple fact that we eat less of them.

Hey, and if these foods really do sustain a small clams-lowering organic chemistry burden, well, so much the better.

This is not a medical advice editorial. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the Wisdom of Solomon of our self-possessed experiences — our been-there-through-that knowledge from the trenches. Bottom Line: You still need the guidance and fear of a licensed medical professional.