If you have diabetes, you really have to watch out for cataracts. The eye disease is a major complication of diabetes and can lead to blindness. While surgery can remove the cataract, its better to avoid them altogether. Fortunately, theres a tasty way to do it.
A recent report detailed how some of your favorite culinary herbs and spices can stop diabetic cataracts. But before this study will make sense, you have to know why cataracts are a problem for diabetics.
One of the biggest complications of diabetes is inflammation. High blood sugar damages tissue, which promotes inflammation. The excess glucose also can link to proteins (called glycation) in your blood vessels, red cells, and tissues. That causes thickening, slowing circulation, and reduced oxygen delivery. And glycation is a factor that can lead to cataract formation!
Back to the study. The researchers in this study found that spice and herb extracts inhibited glycation. While the spice extracts tend to work better than the herb extracts, the real factor was the total phenolic content of the product. Ive told you about phenolics (or phenols) in past issues. They are the incredible flavonoid phytochemicals in plants.
The most potent glycation inhibitors included extracts of cloves, ground Jamaican allspice, and cinnamon. The most potent herbs tested included sage, marjoram, tarragon, and rosemary.
Cloves have phenolic levels up to 30% of dry weight. Cinnamon up to 18%. Contrast that to my favorite fruit, blueberries, which have 5% phenolics by dry weight. Cinnamon actually improves glucose tolerance. Now we see that the phenolic content of plants also protects you from high glucose damage.
Because phenols are the key factor in preventing diabetes and cataracts, its vital you eat plenty of plants, including vegetables, fruits, herbs, and spices. But theres another way you can get even more phenols than anywhere else. Its Seanol.
Seanol is a patented extract of phenolics from the brown seaweed Ecklonia cava. It provides dramatic protection for vascular disease, inflammation, lipids, glucose, and weight control. And this particular flavonoid has a more complex and rich phenolic ring structure than any other known flavonoids.
So it can protect you against diabetic complications, including cataracts, better than any other product.
To get the protection Seanol offers, simply take the supplement Fibroboost from Advanced Bionutritionals. It is the most potent concentration of Seanol on the market. And its one of the few supplements I take regularly! Take two tablets, three times daily. That is enough to give you maximum benefit.
Ref: J Med Food. 2008 June;11(2):275-81