Resveratrol & Diabetes
Type II diabetes mellitus is one of the most common chronic disorders and affects millions of people worldwide. Medical research has made excellent progress in developing drugs and treatment modalities to control the condition and prevent its damaging side effects.
Recently, some medical studies suggest that Resveratol may have anti-diabetic potential in addition to its other numerous health benefits. At this point almost all research pertinent to Resveratrol’s antihyperglycemic effects has been conducted on animals but the results are very promising.
A recent study showed that injecting experimentally diabetic rats with Resveratrol resulted in a significant decrease in the levels of blood glucose, glycosylated hemoglobin, blood urea and other blood chemicals that are usually elevated in type II diabetes which cause damage to body organs. The study also suggests that Resveratrol’s effects are comparable with Gliclazide, an oral hypoglycemic drug.
A similar study showed that direct injection of Resveratrol into the brains of diabetic rats resulted in the reduction of insulin levels, an anti-diabetic effect. Even though the effects were demonstrated on animals but the antidiabetic potential of Resveratrol warrants further research and more studies to demonstrate the same effect on humans.
The main issue for Resveratrol’s research is how to reproduce these effects in humans and more specifically, how to facilitate the absorption of Resveratrol into the brain from the blood stream since it will be mainly administered through the oral route. Nevertheless, Resveratrol has excellent potential and it is on the right track just like other drugs and medications which made it though several animal and clinical trials before becoming available to the public.
Managing diabetes is one of modern medicine’s major challenges as it remains one of the leading causes of morbidity and fatality among millions of people. Hopefully, medical research will make use of Resveratrol’s antidiabetic potential and make it available for this purpose very soon.
