
Okra Cures Diabetes?
Claim: Drinking water in which okra has been soaked overnight will make “diabetes go away.”
TRUE: Okra may have some beneficial effect in helping to regulate blood sugar levels.
FALSE: Okra can “cure diabetes” or eliminate the need for diabetics to take insulin.
Examples: [Collected via Facebook, January 2014]
Someone posted that soaking okra ends in water over night and drinking the water next day helps cure blood sugar levels in diabetics, is this true.
Origins: An item widely circulated via social media in January 2014 (shown above) advocated cutting the ends off a few okra slices, soaking the slices in water overnight, then drinking the water the following morning as a way of making “diabetes go away” and eliminating the need for
diabetics to take insulin shots.
There is a bit of truth to this claim in the sense that okra (also known as lady’s finger, bendi, and gombo) does possess some anti-diabetic properties, namely that the viscosity of okra’s carbohydrates helps to slow the uptake of sugar into the blood by reducing the rate at which sugar is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, thereby reducing the glycemic load of glucose in the blood that can disrupt the body’s ability to properly process the sugars (and that in some cases can lead to the onset of diabetes):
Soluble fiber, found in porridge oats, okra, strawberries and aubergines among other foods, forms a kind of gel inside the bowels. This slows down the absorption of food from the gut, evening out the peaks in blood glucose that occur after meals. Soluble fiber also draws in bile acids
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