Health and Medicine Media

Several traditional Chinese herbs would control the blood sugar when the risk of diabetes is high, suggests a new study.

The review of 16 clinical trials of 15 herbal formulas the herbs showed reduced levels of blood sugar in people with “prediabetes,” which are those with impaired glucose control can become type 2 diabetes. When the researchers gathered data from eight of these studies found that adding an herbal remedy to lifestyle changes doubled the likelihood of normalizing the blood sugar levels.

Moreover, people who had used the remedies were two thirds less likely to develop diabetes during the study, which lasted about 9 months.

The findings are published in the Cochrane Library, Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. For authors, the results are “quite promising.” But they cautioned that the studies had some methodological biases, preventing firm conclusions.

“There are many herbal remedies on the shelves, but few were subjected to a rigorous test,” he told Reuters Health via e-mail the author of the study, Suzanne J. Grant, Center for Complementary Medicine Research at the University of Western Sydney in Australia.

Many of the trials analyzed, explained, were “high risk of bias” that might overestimate the effects of therapies. So, he added, is more rigorous trials necessary before recommending the use of herbal medicines to prevent diabetes.

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