Chinese licorice fights diabetes and obesity
By Revathi Siva Kumar(writer@newseveryday.com) - 24 Dec '14 09:41AM
Licorice can be used to bring down diabetes and fat. A simple herb known for 4,000 years as a part of the 'Glycyrrhiza plants', or licorice, has gone under the name of 'natural sweeteners' or 'herbal medicines'. The Journal of Leukocyte Biology published a new study by researchers, who find that licorice could also reduce or stop metabolic disorders, according tonaturalnews.com.
Its compound, isoliquiritigenin (ILG), could prevent high-fat, diet-related obesity, fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes by aborting a protein involved in them. In an experiment, some subjects were given a high-fat diet, while others consumed a normal one. Those who complained of "diet-related obesity, type 2 diabetes and hepatic steatosis" (fatty liver disease) have benefitted, as their disorders were reduced.
"Identification of small compounds that inhibit the NLRP3 inflammasome is required to design effective therapeutics," said Kiyoshi Takatsu, Ph.D., Department of Immunobiology and Pharmacological Genetics, Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Science for Research at the University of Toyama in Toyama, Japan. He was involved in the team that conducted the research.
Even as far back as 2010, a laboratory study found that glycyrrhizic acid can bring down blood glucose by shooting insulin sensitivity, according todiabeticconnect.com.
Patients with metabolic disorders have been helped by such traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is becoming accepted in western cultures. Patients that have favoured and followed these medical healing cures have also been helped.
Many people around the world are trying to incorporate the modern medical techniques. Some experts say that more research is required for the "pharmacological effectiveness and overall quality of TCM", while most agree that it has a healing effect.
Professor Guo De-an, chief scientist at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, opines that many major western drug firms are exploring this alternative for industrial co-operation. TCM is popular in Singapore, Australia and southeast Asia, but still not much in United States and Europe.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are more than 29 million US patients of diabetes. The medical costs, money lost in reduced work and expenses related to diabetes run into hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Still, more than one-third of United States adults are obese.
Obesity and associated metabolic disorders are among the most important medical issues, currently, according to John Wherry, Ph.D., Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, in which the TCM study was published. New research shows that there is an important role for obesity-driven inflammation in many related conditions. It has identified a new class of many "inflammasome inhibitors", as well as how effective a preclinical model of obesity-induced disease would be.
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