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Go To Index Page Herbs could hold cure for type II diabetes Washington:
A herbal medicine extracted from seeds of the milk thistle, Silybum
marianum (silymarin) may help sugar- control in people with type II
diabetes, according to a research. Research shows that this extract
can help people significantly lower the amount of sugar bound to haemoglobin
in blood, as well as reducing fasting blood sugar levels. Silymarin
contains a number of active constituents called flavolignans which are
also used to help protect the liver from poisoning. "We don't know the
exact mechanism of action for this effect, but this work shows that
silymarin could play an important role in treating type II diabetes,"
says lead author Fallah Huseini, who works at the Institute of Medicinal
Plants, which is based in Tehran, Iran. The data came from a randomized
double-blind clinical trial involving 51 people who had had type II
diabetes for at least 2 years. One group of 25 patients received 200
mg of silymarin three times a day for 4 months, while the remaining
26 received a placebo treatment. All of the patients continued to use
conventional oral hypoglycaemic treatment during the trial. Patients
were examined at monthly intervals. Compared with the beginning of the
trial, the treatment group had a significant reduction in fasting blood
glucose levels (p<0.001), and a reduction in glycosylated haemoglobin
(p<0.001). Both of these measures rose significantly in the placebo
group (p<0.0001). There were also non-significant decreases in blood
lipids in the treatment group. "The results are very encouraging, and
we now need to do further large multi-centre studies," says Huseini.
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