Over the past year, we have been working with many single herbs for balancing blood sugar and metabolism: we’ve created single Spagyrics from Green Propolis, Goat’s Rue, and Green Coffee Bean, and now we have added a Spiritualized Essence of Gurmar, and pulled all these singles and a few more together into our new Madhu-Mehda Somalixir.
Gymnema sylvestre is known in Ayurveda as Gurmar, meaning sugar destroyer, and it has been used for millennia for what we now recognize as diabetes. Gurmar “destroys sugar” in two ways- it blocks the taste sensation of sweetness, making it less pleasurable and helping the user cut back, and it helps the digestive and endocrine system process sugar in a healthier way.
Gurmar seems to act to lower blood sugar in a few ways, lowering the uptake of sugar in the intestines, so that not as much goes into circulation, while also increasing the pancreas’ production of insulin, so that the glucose in the blood can be used as fuel instead of circulating and causing damage. Some studies have also indicated that Gurmar is a healing tonic to the pancreas, reducing inflammation and helping its cells regenerate and work efficiently again. Studies are ongoing, but these effects and the wider tonic properties of Gurmar are well-documented in the long history of Ayurvedic medicine.
Bringing Gurmar and other herbs together into one balanced support and tonic, we created our new Madhu-Mehda Somalixir. The name is a play on words: the ancient Ayurvedic name for diabetes is madhu-meha, referring to the sweetness (madhu) found in diabetic urine (meha). We have created a more positive spin on that name: Madhu for sweet, and Medha for wisdom. Like all our Spagyrics, this Somalixir invokes the intelligence and healing wisdom of plants for health and balance.
In addition to Gurmar, Madhu-Medha includes Goat’s Rue, a glucose-balancing tonic we have written about previously, as well as the classic tonic herb Turmeric. Turmeric brings balance to many of the body’s systems, and for this formula, we use it for its liver tonic and anti-inflammatory effects. Better liver function takes some of the strain of glucose metabolism off of the pancreas so that it does not become further compromised, while anti-inflammatory effects heal many aspects of digestion and metabolism.
In fact, while many cases of type 2 diabetes are related to overeating, obesity, and consumption of refined and toxic foods and sugars, research is also uncovering increasing cases of what is sometimes called “type 1.5” diabetes: a syndrome not present at childhood as insulin dependence, but which is found in people who are not overweight or otherwise unhealthy eaters, and seems to be genetic in origin.
This type is also called LADA (latent auto-immune diabetes in adults), and may be related to auto-immune dysfunction creating inflammatory damage in the pancreas. For victims of this syndrome, the usual advice of weight loss and reduction of sweets does not help, as a basic inflammatory process is at work which is destroying the body’s glucose control mechanisms. Even in more “traditional” types of diabetes, this destruction is present, and so our Madhu-Medha includes herbs to address the underlying imbalance and restore overall health, in addition to working to reduce blood sugar levels.
Diabetes is a serious illness, but it is one with many treatment options which are holistic, natural, and empowering to the patient. Our Madhu-Mehda Somalixir, along with our other Spagyrics for metabolic health, are a good start for a conversation with your healer about taking care of yourself and moving towards better health.
