London:
You could soon be able to control your blood sugar levels by sipping African tea, if researchers are to be believed.
A team in Denmark is attempting to develop a treatment for type-2 diabetics with the help of a special African tea -- it is produced from the extract of Rauvolfia Vomitoria leaves and the fruit of Citrus aurantium.
The researchers have recently completed a four-month long clinical test on 23 patients with type-2 diabetes and are more than satisfied with the result.
"The research subjects drank 750 ml of tea each day. The (tea) appears to differentiate itself from other current type-2 diabetes treatments because the tea does not initially affect the sugar content of the blood.
"But after four months of treatment with tea we can, however see a significant increase in glucose tolerance," said lead researcher Joan Campbell-Tofte of Copenhagen University.
In fact, according to the researchers, the tests show another pattern in the changes in fatty acid composition with the patients treated with tea in comparison with the placebo group.
"In the patient group who drank the tea, the number of polyunsaturated fatty acids increased. That is good for the body's cells because the polyunsaturated fat causes the cell membranes to be more permeable, which results in the cells absorbing glucose better from the blood," Tofte said.
The team has previously tested the tea from Nigeria on genetically diabetic mice. The results showed that after six weeks of daily treatment with the African tea, combined with a low-fat diet, resulted in changes in combination and amount of fat in the animals' eyes and protection of fragile pancreas of the mice.