Saffron Improves Long Term Diabetes Control

Diabetes is a serious health condition that is rapidly on the rise. The beautiful, powerful and gentle herb saffron may be able to help solve that problem.

A new meta-analysis of 12 controlled studies has found that, though saffron may not help insulin sensitivity or resistance, it does significantly lower fasting plasma glucose, and, most importantly, it does significantly lower HbA1c.

The reason that significantly improving HbA1c is important is that HbA1c is the most important marker of long term blood sugar and diabetes control.

This study adds to the evidence that the versatile herb saffron may also offer significant benefit to diabetics.

Front Nutr. March 2024;11:1349006.

 

Can Tomatoes & Lycopene Protect You Against Cancer

Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant found in tomatoes. This massive new study set out to see if tomatoes and lycopene could protect you from cancer.

Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant found in red fruits and vegetables, including watermelon, pink grapefruit and apricots. But over 80% of our lycopene come from tomatoes.

This new systematic review, which included 119 studies of over 2.6 million people, looked at the protective role of tomato and lycopene in cancer.

The study did not find that eating tomato reduced your risk of cancer. But it did find that the people who ate the most tomato had a significant 11% lower risk of dying from cancer.

When it came to lycopene in the diet, the study found getting more lycopene in your diet did significantly reduce the risk of cancer by 5%. When it came to cancer mortality, the risk was reduced by a significant 16%.

The most accurate way of measuring lycopene intake is by analyzing blood levels. People with the highest blood levels of lycopene had a significant 11% lower risk of cancer and a significant 24% lower risk of dying from it.

This study suggests that eating more tomatoes and, especially, getting more lycopene can protect against cancer.

Front. Nutr. 2025;12:1516048.

 

Powerful Herbal Help for Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Although it is not much talked about, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease has emerged as the leading cause of chronic liver disease in the world. Nature offers a very powerful way to help treat it.

When you have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), fats, including cholesterol and triglycerides, collect in liver tissue. As many as 30% of adults around the world suffer from it, but most of them probably don’t even know it. In about 10% of cases, NAFLD will advance to the more serious nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and that can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure.

Silymarin is the active component of perhaps the most powerful liver protecting herb of them all: milk thistle. In people with NAFLD, silymarin lowers liver enzymes more effectively than drugs (Hepat Mon 2012;12(8):e6099). A Meta-analysis of 8 controlled studies confirms silymarin’s ability to significantly reduce
levels of the liver enzymes AST and ALT (Medicine 2017;96(49):e9061).

A new meta-analysis has strengthened the evidence by including many more studies. This meta-analysis included 26 controlled studies of 2,375 people with NAFLD.

The results showed that silymarin improves the whole range of fats that accumulate in the liver. It significantly lowers total cholesterol, the harmful LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides, while significantly elevating the beneficial HDL-cholesterol. Fatty liver index and fatty liver score were both lowered significantly on silymarin. There was a significantly higher prevalence of fat build up in the control group than in the silymarin group.

The results were just as encouraging for liver enzymes. Silymarin significantly lowered both ALT and AST.

There was also a small, but significant, reduction in body mass index with silymarin.

This massive analysis of the research on silymarin suggests that the active ingredient of the power liver protecting herb, milk thistle, can offer significant help to people with NAFLD.

Ann Hepatol. March-Apr 2024;29(2):101174.