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Bitter facts
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Bitter gourd is not often relished by the young and old. However, today, its medicinal properties outweigh the bitter taste and it is being used to treat diseases like diabetes and HIV/AIDS.
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HEALTH GOURD: This bitter fruit is part of medicinal folklore.
BITTER GOURD, also known as balsam apple, bitter-melon and balsam pear, is renowned in the Old World tropics for its medicinal properties. From India to the Federated States of Micronesia, and from China to the Solomon Islands, this bitter fruit is part of medicinal folklore as well as an exotic, acquired taste.
The New World is slowly beginning to discover for itself the ability of this versatile fruit to treat diseases as old as diabetes and as new as HIV/AIDS.
Traditionally, along with quinine extracts from the bark of the Cinchona tree, juice made from the root, stem, fruit and flowers was a first line cure for all fevers in general and malaria in particular.
The astringent juice from the soft plant parts is an old remedy for skin blemishes, burns and abscesses and the occasional bellyache.
The saw-shaped seeds give the plant its name Momordica (Latin for "to bite"): they are rich in proteins that help clear up infections of the chest and guts.
The seeds became a cure-all of sorts, finding their way into remedies for conditions as different and unrelated to each other as mumps, lumbago, breast cancer and piles. Juice from crushed leaves was a liver tonic and menstrual regulator; crushed flowers and roots were cough remedies and asthma fix-its.
However, if there is one condition with whose cure this fruit is synonymous with, it is Diabetes mellitus.
Indians have an almost mystical belief in the ability of bitter gourd to cure this disease. Some of this belief stems from a desperate desire to avoid a lifetime of insulin injections.
True, nearly all parts of the Momordica plant have blood-sugar lowering properties, but sadly, it is effective only in Non Insulin Dependent Diabetes (NIDDM), the variant of the disease treated with oral hypoglycaemic drugs and not injectable insulin. Besides, there is no evidence that it is more effective than drugs that are commonly in use.
Enthusiasts of the bitter-gourd cure still need to check their blood sugar levels regularly to check the response of the disease to this treatment.
Recently, a search for natural, anti-viral herbs threw up this interesting fact: the proteins in Momordica inhibit the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which is central to the pathogenesis of HIV/AIDS.
People who are already HIV positive will find that a diet that regularly includes bitter gourd will lower the viral load in their blood by selectively inhibiting the growth of cells already infected with the virus.
All this is just one more arrow in the bitter gourd's burgeoning quiver of cures!
RAJIV. M
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