Can bitter gourd replace metformin?

The pursuit of health is everyone's goal. In order to achieve this goal, diet and nutrition are one of the essential links, and "food supplement" has a good reputation among the people. For example, there are not a few patients who think bitter gourd can replace metformin. What is worrying is that many people are partial to the pursuit of health, which not only fails to achieve the purpose of maintaining health, but also causes harm to themselves. Let's talk about bitter gourd and metformin today.

First of all, we need to define a concept, what is natural health food (NHPs). At present, there is no unified definition of NHPs, which is closely related to food or traditional medicines from plants.

NHPs should meet the following characteristics: it exists naturally, not artificially; Existing in local food types; Daily intake can prevent or reduce chronic diseases such as tumors, cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer's disease. Its physiological function is different from traditional nutrients, which provide neither energy nor vitamins and minerals.

So, is NHPs a health product? No. Take bitter gourd as an example. This is a common vegetable in summer. Bitter gourd may contain insulin-like substances, which can help maintain normal blood sugar and blood lipid metabolism if eaten regularly. But this does not mean that the "bitter gourd capsules" (health products) sold in the market also have the same effect.

Secondly, as food, the possibility of excessive intake of bitter gourd is very small, and the daily average intake and taking time of health care products are much higher than that of daily food, so the probability of adverse complications is greatly increased.

Roughly the same as the liver injury caused by eating traditional Chinese medicine, many traditional Chinese medicines can prevent chronic diseases as part of dietotherapy, but it should be noted that the dosage of traditional Chinese medicines taken as food in dietotherapy is extremely low, and the dosage taken by people with complications is much higher than that taken as food. Secondly, some manufacturers' processing of traditional Chinese medicine is not standardized, which leads to the mixed emphasis on metal substances in their products, resulting in liver function damage, but this does not mean that traditional Chinese medicine is not good or ineffective.

As for why some people use NHPs without any effect, this should be comprehensively analyzed from the role of NHPs and cannot be separated from other eating habits. It must always be remembered that NHPs is a part of food and interacts with other eating and behavior habits. If you have a lot of bad eating and behavior habits, it is difficult to maintain health simply by eating NHPs.

Here's another example: drinking tea is good for human health, but according to the research published on 20 17, the impact of drinking tea on human health is mainly among people who don't smoke. In other words, smoking is more harmful to human health, thus offsetting the benefits of drinking tea.

It is worth noting that some people are too superstitious about the role of NHPs and refuse to use drugs, which is also very dangerous. After all, the effect of NHPs on diseases is mild and lasts for a long time. The accurate location of NHPs should be a supplement to mainstream treatment, not a substitute. Take bitter gourd as an example. Although it has hypoglycemic effect, the effect is still far weaker than metformin.

Others may ask why the research results of the same NHPs in different countries are very different. The reason is that apart from the genetic differences between people, it is largely due to the differences caused by culture and climate.

As nutrition workers, we have repeatedly stressed that NHPs is a food that exists in the daily menu of local people and cannot be simply copied to other countries. For example, almonds are beneficial in many studies in the United States, so many foods in the United States, such as milk, have added almonds. However, the consumption rate of almond or almond food in China is very low, and there are few reports on its benefits. When considering the relationship between NHPs and health, don't be too obsessed with or even superstitious about foreign NHPs.

Author: Xu Renying (Deputy Chief Physician, Department of Clinical Nutrition, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University)