I recently attended a forum held at the Garvan institute in Sydney, there was four panelists two from conventional medicine and two from complimentary alternate medicine (CAM) the objective was to identify the roles each play in our health and whether CAM would ever be integrated into the fold of conventional medicine.
Professor David Johns from Garvan’s diabetes and research department felt the inroads being made by his department’s research into bitter melon as a tool to fight diabetes proved the conventional vs. CAM landscape had shifted.
Sweet & bitter news
Professor Johns has been working on the action of bitter melon, a Chinese fruit used for centuries in alternate Chinese medicine for healing everything from hypertension to the common cold. What Professor Johns found was that the fruit had qualities that improved the uptake of glucose from the blood in to muscle cells. The action was due to the enhancement of the enzyme AMPK. This enzyme is responsible for the transport and regulation of glucose a very important issue for type 2 diabetes.
When two sides collide
As the discussion on the benefits of both types of medicine ensued it became apparent that the forum was going to be dominated by the research on the melon rather the than mending bridges. The Garvan has allocated a considerable amount of their resourses to bringing the bitter melon’s potential to fruition, hopefully as a cure or at least a medicine that will reduce the complications associated with type 2 diabetes.
Bitter melon and the gym
The action of bitter melon on AMPK and its subsequent influence on glucose uptake is an important step towards providing insight in to the mechanisms that are at work in type 2 diabetes, but what shouldn’t be overlooked is that it was also noted that exercise shows the same affect on AMPK and glucose uptake. The ratio of muscle to fat is an important factor in the effects of insulin sensitivity and the utilisation of glucose. Further evidence that people would rather wait for medical intervention rather than get off their fat backsides.
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