Diabetes plant? Oh wow...

Look what I found.. The DIABETES PLANT.... It has been making waves internationally, and is being rediscovered in India now... Sold at Rs 50, I found it in a corner shop selling artificial plants, real bonsai and real ferns... The lady at the counter informed me that you have to eat one leaf a day to keep your blood sugar naturally low. That is really decent of nature... But I remember the Leaf Man ( I have blogged on him in my yoga blog) telling me that nature has created plants for every known disease in the world. And that we can cure ourselves naturally. I had, I remember, been cured of corn with just the sap of a weed that grows by the roadside. ( I have blogged on that too). So now more about this diabetes plant -- ask in nurseries. If you are desperate then land up at Thakur Village, Kandivli East, and take the road off Rama's restaurant for this nursery. And don't come on Mondays which is the weekly off in this area. I will return later with the phone number of the shop soon...

The plant's botanical name is Salacia reticulata, and according to news reports (see this news report in 1997 in New Scientist) floating on the net, a Japanese team discovered the ingredient which blocks blood sugar.. And apparently this plant has been in use for over 3000 years in India (We were diabetic even then??I always assumed that it was the part of the new age syndrome -- though Dr Sharon Maolem in her extremely gripping book on mind-body links and healing in her quite iconoclastic book Survival of the Sickest suggests that diabetes is part of the body's healing mechanism to compensate for a cause from environmental triggers) ...

Any case some reports also suggest that there are over 400 known diabetes-controlling plants.. So I have no clue which one is the one I have shown here... But it is good to see that Mumbaikars can buy plants beyond money plant (the most common plant on balconies and homes, including its variants, because it is such a no-fuss, one pot plant)...