Posted on 06/17/2015 4:49:39 PM PDT by kindred
"This is a plant that only grows in Israel, Jordan and the Sinai, and has been used traditionally by Bedouins for controlling diabetes. I've been screening different Israeli plants for diabetes and this is one of the best candidates." –Jonathan Gorelick
(Israel)—[Israel21c.org] Ingesting an indigenous Israeli aromatic shrub called Chiliadenus iphionoides (more commonly, "sharp varthemia" or "Goldilocks") could improve insulin secretion and glucose absorption in people with diabetes, according to plant biologist Jonathan Gorelick, scientific director of the Judea Regional Research and Development Center in Israel. (Photo via Israel21c.org)
The center's efforts to isolate the plant's active compounds—and to assure these compounds are present when the plant is grown in the greenhouse rather than in the wild—is the topic of Gorelick's presentation today at the 25th Judea and Samaria Research Studies Conference at Ariel University.
"This is a plant that only grows in Israel, Jordan and the Sinai, and has been used traditionally by Bedouins for controlling diabetes," Gorelick tells ISRAEL21c. "I've been screening different Israeli plants for diabetes and this is one of the best candidates."
In a study published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology in October 2011, Gorelick and his team describe how they tested the effects of the plant on a particular Negev rodent with a nutritionally induced model of diabetes. When the animals were given an oral glucose tolerance test, blood-glucose levels returned immediately to normal levels only in the ones that had been fed sharp varthemia before the test.
"We also did a longer-term study in which we mixed the plant with their food and showed the [positive] effects," says Gorelick. Consumption of the yellow-flowering plant increased sugar absorption in the rodents' muscle and fat cells, and reduced blood-sugar levels.
Gorelick and his research collaborators have identified one of the active compounds responsible for these effects, and continue to search for others. At the same time, they are experimenting to find the best way to grow the plant agriculturally with its active compounds intact so that it could be cultivated as a commercially available natural treatment for diabetes.
From the wild to the greenhouse "Many medicinal plants, when grown in greenhouses, don't produce the compounds they do in the wild because those compounds are a defense response to conditions in the wild," he explains. "We're trying to emulate those stimulators from the wild in the greenhouse setting."
The nonprofit Judea Regional R&D Center is among eight agricultural research centers in Israel's periphery regions. These centers are supervised and supported by the Israeli Ministry of Science and academically sponsored by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
The Judea center focuses on industrial research and development of products, technologies, patents and inventions related to regional ecology, desertification, climate change, wastewater recycling, desert farming techniques, and indigenous plants for eating as well as medicinal, cosmetic, pest control, landscaping and other uses.
Two Judea Regional R&D Center PhDs and two research technicians are working on the Goldilocks project with collaborators from the Hebrew University Faculty of Nutrition in Rehovot for the animal studies, and with plant biologist Nurit Bernstein from the government's Volcani Agricultural Research Organization on the greenhouse studies.
(Los Angeles native Gorelick earned undergraduate and doctorate degrees in plant biology from Cornell University and Rutgers University, respectively, and did post-doc work in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's School of Pharmacy under Prof. Raphael Mechoulam, a worldwide pioneer of research into medical cannabis.)
Sorry. I don't believe it.
Maybe used to alleviate some of the symptoms that diabetics presented -- but I don't believe the Bedouins "traditionally" had clue one about even the existence of diabetes let along how to treat it.
The most likely scenario is common to many medicines- people consumed it, most likely as a seasoning or steeped in hot water, then noticed that they felt better. That’s how the Greeks and Native Americans discovered ASA (willow bark extract) before Bayer figured out how to make it from coal tar.
Analysis of the knowledge base/level of Indigenous Peoples” is quite a demanding intellectual/scientific effort. As as example, the SW medicine men knew that in the year after a bumper crop of pinion nuts, a disease was more common - we know it as Hanta Virus.
Turns out the bumper crop of nuts led to a population explosion of rodents, and when the next year was back to normal level of pinion nut availability, the rodents came into the residential and food storage areas of the medicine man’s patients.
The rodent droppings carried the Hanta virus to the Indians when infected mice droppings contaminated food or possibly were dried, powdered under foot, and inhaled.
Question: Did they have a cure?
However, most of the European Union is boycotting anything that comes out of Israel.
For Hanta?
I don’t know — but Hanta is high on the list of things you do not want to come down with.
but I don’t believe the Bedouins “traditionally” had clue one about even the existence of diabetes let along how to treat it.
That is if they lived from being beheaded, stoned, stabbed, strangled, run over by a camel, poisoned by spoiled food, throat slit in their sleep by abused wife, murdered by someone that wanted what they had, or for being the wrong kind of muslim..
I dont know how much the highly bio available vitamins and Minerals...in this prodcut may or may not affect diabetes per se...But I do know that I get a very even flow of “smooth” energy and sense of increased well being that may be related to blood sugar..within a half an hour of ingesting same
Type 1 or Type 2???
I hate when they do not mention the type.
They really are two very different diseases.
I assume it is Type 2, because Type 1 is the inability to MAKE insulin, which sounds like this plant can’t help.
BTW, I am a Type 1.
I love coming across Pinion Nuts. If my Survival is too low, I just read a Lad's Life, and I can craft Trail Mix at any Campfire I happen across!
“Maybe used to alleviate some of the symptoms that diabetics presented — but I don’t believe the Bedouins “traditionally” had clue one about even the existence of diabetes let along how to treat it. “
The bedouins found that this relieved symptoms of something that ailed them. Was called whatever the bedouins called it. I don’t think a Bedouin said, “gee Achmed, that’s diabetes!”
Did they know about cats?
Sometimes the problem is a weak, rather than totally absent capacity for producing or utilizing insulin. Oral agents may help there. If no insulin at all, then there is no remedy but the classic insulin injections.
I don’t know, a lot of ancient cultures knew something was wrong. They noticed that the urine was sweet of people with the disease.
Not sure I’d want to be the guy to discover that...
Might have been noticed in that the latrines would attract even more insects than normal.
Anyhow... this is likely to turn out to be something akin to the known oral insulin booster agents (or it could be a member of a new family of them).
An agent that had a high margin of error would be welcome, it could be used as a supplement without need to carefully watch blood glucose.
Interesting, I hope it will be proven to work.
http://www.fragrantfields.com/creepingjennygoldilocks.aspx
Creeoing jenny or goldilocks is all over my backyard so much for only growing in israel
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