By Neil Sherman
　　HealthSCOUT Reporter

MONDAY, Sept. 11 (HealthSCOUT) -- Ginseng continues to show promise in helping diabetics lower their blood sugar, a Canadian study shows.

A low dose of the herb taken up to two hours before a meal can lower blood sugar levels up to 20 percent, say researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto.

Taking more ginseng, though, apparently doesn't improve the results.

"We were following up on our study published in April, and we wanted to see if increasing levels of ginseng would give a stronger affect -- basically by doubling or tripling it," says Dr. Vladimir Vuksan, associate director of the hospital's Risk Factor Modification Centre. "But what we found was that low doses, 3 grams of American ginseng, produce the same effect as larger doses."

American ginseng is a variety of China's famous herbal remedy. Also native to Russia, North Korea, Japan and some areas of North America, ginseng has different attributes, depending on where it's grown. It was first cultivated in the United States in the late 1800s. Difficult to grow, it can take four to six years to become mature enough to harvest. The researchers used the American variety, grown especially for them in Ontario, Canada.

To test how ginseng affects blood sugar, the researchers gave 10 people with Type II diabetes capsules containing either a placebo or 3, 6 or 9 grams of ground ginseng. The participants took the ginseng either 40, 80 or 120 minutes before eating a special high-glucose meal.

"Basically what we saw is a 15 to 20 percent reduction in blood sugar, regardless of which dose [of ginseng] we gave them," Vuksan says. Blood sugar levels also weren't affected by when the participants took the ginseng, he says. Results of the study appear in the September issue of Diabetes Care.

In Type II diabetes, which affects an estimated 18 million Americans, glucose (or sugar) builds up in the blood. Sometimes this happens because the body doesn't make enough insulin, a hormone that helps process glucose and helps it get into the cells. Other times, the cells simply stop responding to the insulin.

The fact that ginseng can lower blood sugar levels even when taken two hours before a meal is an important finding, Vuksan says.

"Typically, most prescription medicines require you to take a pill and then eat immediately because it affects blood sugar immediately," he says.

But ginseng has no effect on blood sugar unless you eat, he says.

"It is not effective in this way without taking food. You will not become hypoglycemic [suffer from low blood sugar], which can be a danger with prescription medicines," Vuksan says.

That's good news, says C.W. Fetrow, co-author of The Complete Guide to Herbal Medicine and a clinical pharmacist at St. Francis Medical Center in Pittsburgh.

"I was aware that ginseng had an effect on lowering glucose, and it's good that it does not cause hypoglycemia. That does sound promising," Fetrow says.

But the size of the study is too small to prove ginseng's effectiveness, say both men.

"Although we are encouraged by this study, it only begins to address the lack of scientific, placebo-controlled trials in humans," Vuksan says. "We still don't know what the effects of long-term ginseng consumption will be, or whether ginseng may interact with other drugs adversely."

"We also don't know if these findings will hold true for all American ginseng products or different species of ginseng," says Vuksan who is involved in a long-term study of both the American and Asian varieties of ginseng.

Fetrow says, "The gold standard for anything to lower glucose is how it works over time." To check this, doctors use what's called a hemoglobin AIC test, which measures the average glucose level produced by the body in the last three months. "A better hemoglobin AIC outcome indicates a slower progression of the disease, and it also slows the time to onset of insulin-dependent diabetes," Fetrow says.

"What we need to see here, then, is whether the ginseng will provide a better hemoglobin AIC over time," he says.

John Sievenpiper, a doctoral candidate who's Vuksan's assistant, says the longer-term study will use the hemoglobin AIC test to measure the effectiveness of ginseng.

What To Do

"People with diabetes should not be rushing out and taking ginseng without consulting their doctors," Vuksan says.

Fetrow warns that Ginseng might interfere with anticoagulation drugs given to people at risk for forming blood clots, such as those with artificial heart valves or with irregular heartbeats.

"And it [ginseng] is a stimulant, which may limit its usefulness in diabetics," Fetrow says. "Its stimulating effects tend to accumulate over time." People can get nervous or suffer from insomnia or tremors, he says.

(From Yahoo!)