Salacia Oblonga

A recent study done in July and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggested that a specie of plant found in India near Sri Lanka helps to lower glucose levels after a large meal. I have never heard of this plant before, so I decided to link to the research I found here and take a look at the overall study.

The study took a group of Type 2 Diabetics and gave them doses of Salacia Oblonga extract in either 0mg, 240mg or 480mg quantities. Then all patients had a control meal and blood glucose tests were taken. There was a reduction in glucose levels 180 minutes after the meal with the patients who took the extract over control. The findings point to a significant reduction in glucose after a big meal with the help of this herb. The entire study can be read here- Extract of Salacia oblonga lowers acute glycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Basically, this is yet another herb that has demonstrated some glucose lowering effects. I looked around on Pubmed and found another piece of research where some researchers used a cocktail of 8 Indian herbs on rats- Curcuma longa, Strychnos potatorum, Salacia oblonga, Tinospora cordifolia, Vetivelia zizanioides, Coscinium fenestratum, Andrographis paniculata and Mimosa pudica. While I have never heard of any of those, Salacia Oblonga is one of them! They fed this herbal combination to rats with induced Diabetes Mellitus and there was “significant lower levels of glucose” and that a larger dose brought back almost all the parameters to near normal levels. Please read this article as well, if your interested- Antihyperglycaemic effect of ‘Ilogen-Excel’, an ayurvedic herbal formulation in streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus.