Diabetics and weight loss

Happy Monday! I have a lot to discuss with you all this beautiful Monday and I start by saying I hope you had a great weekend (it was a long extended holiday for many). I made sure that my plate was full for my extended weekend with cookouts and lots of restaurants. If you read the blog often then you've seen my post on the best damn french toast that I've ever tried and again I'll mention it to you then we'll get to some healthy talk too.


This is a banana foster french toast with caramelized bananas, sweet brown sugar rum sauce (which was home made), and toasted walnuts. It's the best thing you could ever eat I swear and I'm testing out a few recipes for it now. I'll re-post when I find the best version but there are tons of recipes online so if you try it and find a good one let me know. 




Now some of you shouldn't eat sugar and I tried a new remedy for diabetes and weight management this weekend too. I've read countless reviews online for bitter melon and how it helps with diabetes and I decided to try it out on my family. 
It also says to help cholesterol, kidney stones, liver functionality, digestion health, pancreatic cancer and great for vitamin K which benefits bones. Both my father and my husband both have diabetes and have tried a tea that seems to work wonders. After doing a bit of research on it, I read countless stories about how it has helped tons of people and it's widely used in Asian countries and West Indian nations and you don't hear about a lot of diabetic cases there so seems to be working for ages. I figured why not give it a try. I purchased the tea which we've started using and the fruit itself but I haven't used the fruit (it went bad quickly) so I'll stick with the tea. The fruit itself resembles a cucumber but has bumps on the skin. 

According to Livestrong, there is a risk of hypoglycemia if you take too much bitter melon, especially if you are taking insulin or a sulfonylurea or thiazolidinedione drug. Drinking bitter melon juice is sometimes associated with stomach pain or diarrhea.

But according to users, bitter melon tea is a whole different story. Most say it tastes good, “better than green tea,” one commented. It’s also easy to prepare and easy to buy, either at an Asian grocery or online. Bitter melon capsules are available too and my dad used the capsules with black seed and he loved it. He's been using them for a while and eats sugar too much in my opinion but his diabetes is definitely under control. 

Some of the compounds in bitter melon might also suppress growth of certain types of cancer cells, according to the Cancer Center, which cites several research studies suggesting this. In one study, published in "Anticancer Research" in 2000, researchers tested the ability of a compound from bitter gourd to affect growth of highly malignant human breast cancer cells in culture and in laboratory animals. They found the compound inhibited division of the cultured cells and suppressed expression of cancer-associated genes. In laboratory animals with tumors, administration of the compound extended survival times significantly. While promising, these results still need to be confirmed by trials with human subjects.