By Dr. Kevin Curran

A New Superfood?

The White Mulberry Tree Helps with Diabetes,Obesity and High Cholesterol.

Diabetes has been steadily increasing for decades. The latest estimates by the IDF report that 8.3% of the global population is currently suffering from diabetes. Unfortunately, this trend is predicted to continue. Any natural remedy that can assist in the prevention or treatment of diabetes is currently in great demand.

For this reason, the White Mulberry tree (Morus alba) has been gathering quite a bit of attention. The renewed interest with this plant is largely due to a series of publications demonstrating the benefit to adding white mulberry to your diet. By ingesting white mulberry before or with meals, you can avoid the spikes in blood-sugar that are common when eating carbohydrates. You can either eat the plant as a dried fruit or else you can take mulberry extract in capsules. Both forms impart the health benefit of the plant. The fruit actually tastes quite nice, the flavor is somewhere between a sweet fig and a raisin.

Ok, so how exactly does white mulberry relate to diabetes? Well, if you remember from your last biology class, it’s the excessive amounts of sugar in our blood that can often lead to diabetes (T2D). High blood-sugar levels demand that the pancreas works extra hard to keep up. The pancreas releases large amounts of the insulin protein. The job of insulin is to convert extra sugar in our blood into glycogen, a storage molecule. But when we overload our body with sugar, this pancreas/insulin/glycogen machinery cannot keep up. The pancreas begins to fail as an organ, and more often than not, the symptoms of diabetes set in. Yuck!

Nobody wants this…

So, how do we avoid it? Well, for starters, we should be out exercising and we should be limiting the amount of carbs in our diet. Okay, fair enough, but we all know that already. In addition to these lifestyle changes, there is also great interest in a natural, food-based remedy that can help prevent these issues from occurring.

Clinical results have shown that by adding a few grams of white mulberry extract to your diet, you will keep your blood sugar levels lower. In one study, conducted with the fruits of white mulberry, the authors explored the benefit white mulberry offers to diabetics. Mahmoud et al. used diabetic rats in their experimental design. One group of diabetic rats ate their regular carbohydrate diet, while another group made 5% of their diet consist of white mulberry fruits. The blood-glucose level of the both groups were then tested 4 weeks after the experiment began. The scientists found that the diabetic rats who ate white mulberry fruits as 5% of their overall diet, experienced a significantly lower blood-glucose level as compared to diabetic rats with no white mulberry. Similar results have also been reported in human patients.

But that’s not all…

The White mulberry plant is rich in multiple phytochemicals that impart various health benefits. Reports have highlighted the plant’s ability to act as a powerful antioxidant, this has implications for anti-aging. Additionally other reports highlight the capacity of white mulberry to combat high cholesterol, specifically high LDL cholesterol. If you remember correctly, LDL is the bad cholesterol, it’s the one we don’t want. HDL is the cholesterol we do want, and in fact White Mulberry has shown to boost HDL levels.

In summary, white mulberry offers multiple health benefits. And for this reason, the plant is now regarded as a superfood. As we look forward, diabetes is predicted to afflict approximately 582 million people by 2035. Let’s hope that more natural remedies, like white mulberry, continue to yield positive results regarding the suppression of high blood-sugar levels.

Kevin Curran holds a PhD in molecular biology and currently serves as a professor at the University of San Diego, teaching courses on Cell Biology and Plant Biology.

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White Mulberry for Diabetes, Obesity and High Cholesterol | Chinese Medicine Living