Bitter melon is the fruit of vine commonly found throughout China, India, and other parts of the East. The plant has evolved an extremely bitter taste, and so animals commonly avoid it. However, humans—the only animal that has managed to develop a taste for bitter foods—commonly use it in salads, stir fries, and so on, especially in Asia.
Practitioners in India of the herbal medicine known as Ayurveda, as hell as Chinese healers, have traditionally used Bitter Melon to treat what we in the West call Type II diabetes. With the rise of modern science, we have now begun to understand the mechanism of how this remarkable plant operates.
In particular, we now realize that bitter melon contains several dozen active substances that activate an enzyme in the body called AMPK, a protein that regulates metabolism and glucose uptake. One such substance increases fatty acid oxidation and aids in the disposal of sugar, and another even seems to mimic the effects of insulin.
Bitter melon is the fruit of vine commonly found throughout China, India, and other parts of the East. The plant has evolved an extremely bitter taste, and so animals commonly avoid it. However, humans—the only animal that has managed to develop a taste for bitter foods—commonly use it in salads, stir fries, and so on, especially in Asia.
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