Vegetables are a key factor for a healthy and a sound body.I can not emphasize enough the importance of green vegetables for women with PCOS.Green vegetables are rich in minerals,vitamins and antioxidants.
Today i am going to talk about a vegetable that not only offers above mentioned benefits but also helps in insulin resistance that is a cause of type 2 diabetes in patients with PCOS.
Thus indirectly it increases insulin sensitivity and normalize the blood sugar levels in PCOS.
If we talk about how bitter gourd works on our body systems and controls the body sugar levels we will see that bitter gourd contains few active compounds that help reduce the blood glucose levels.These are
1-Charanti
2-Vicine
3-Polypeptide-p
4-Lectin
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Main mechanism:
Bittergourd can regulate blood glucose levels by two major mechanisms:
1- It controls the absorption by the gut of the glucose that we intake via food.
2- Also it stimulates the uptake of glucose from blood to the skeletal muscles.
Active Substances
Charanti
Charanti has a blood glucose lowering effect.All the active compounds present in bittergourd work either by stimulating the function of pancreatic beta cells to increase the amount of insulin in the body or have insulin like action in the body thus increasing the uptake of glucose from peripheral tissues and as a result reduces the blood glucose concentration.In this way they also improve insulin resistance.
Vicine
Polypeptide-p
Polypeptide-p reduces blood sugar levels as it acts as the insulin-like hypoglycemic protein.It performs the same function as that of insulin in the body thus used in type 1 diabetes to reduce blood glucose level.
Lectin
Lectin on other hand helps reducing the glucose concentrations by acting on the peripheral tissues.Lectins are a form of protein that bind to the cell membranes.It causes the sugar molecules to bind to the membrane of other cells as it is sugar binding.It also suppresses appetite thus by eating less frequently the blood glucose levels remains low.
After effect of the eating bitter guard is usually hypoglycemia and the main factor that causes this after effect is also lectin.
Precaution
You all should know that excess of everything is bad so if you are going to add bitter gourd in your diet plan make sure to not over consume it as it can cause abdominal discomfort like abdominal pain and diarrhea.
Make sure to consume not more than two bitter gourd in your diet per day and make sure to remove the seeds in it before consuming it.
Also make sure that you are not consuming it with any antidiabetic medicine or insulin as they have hypoglycemic effect just like bitter gourd and thus using them along with bitter gourd can cause severe hypoglycemia and will cause more harm than good to the body.
How to consume
You can either make juice of bitter guard(you can add some stevia or any other sugar alternative to improve the taste) or you can fry it in some healthy fat and make your own healthy snack.
