Does Berberine Help Treat Type 2 Diabetes?
What is Berberine?
Berberine is a substance that can be found in various plants, including tree turmeric, Oregon grape, European barberry, and goldenseal.
Berberine has been used for more than 400 years in traditional Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern medicine, according to a December 2014 paper in the journal Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Goldenseal, a plant farmed commercially in North America, particularly in the Blue Ridge Mountains, contains berberine.
Can berberine help treat type 2 diabetes?
The hypoglycemic effect of berberine was documented in 1988 when it was used to treat diarrhea in diabetic patients in China, according to a research that was published in the journal Metabolism in 2008. Since that time, Chinese doctors have employed berberine to treat diabetes.
Clinical Trials of Berberine in Diabetes:
116 individuals with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes participated in a randomized experiment in which Yifou Zhang et al.
evaluated the benefits of berberine (500 mg twice day) vs a placebo.
After three months, those using berberine saw substantial drops in their hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, and systolic blood pressure. HbA1c decreased from 7.5% to 6.6%.
Five out of the 57 participants in the berberine group complained of constipation, and two of them had to lower their dose to 250 mg twice day.
There were no further negative effects noted.
These early studies have found berberine is as potent as other medications for diabetes, and may also lower cholesterol and improve blood flow beneficial effects most diabetes drugs don’t have.
Beneficial Effects of Berberine for diabetes:
- Berberine is a lipid-lowering agent.
- After a six-week experiment, Affuso’s team discovered that taking 500mg of berberine together with 200mg of red yeast rice resulted in appreciable reductions in total cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides.
- Berberine may lower fasting and postprandial, or post-meal, glucose levels by more than 30%.
- Regulates blood sugar.
Whatever the mechanism (or, more likely, processes), it is evident that berberine significantly lowers blood sugar levels. The amount that berberine decreases blood sugar in people living with diabetes has been studied in a number of clinical trials, along with the drug’s general safety and acceptability.
