Living with Diabetes

O had an interesting chat with another fellow diabetic from India. Seems like both of us had heard and beloieved that fenugreek, aka Methi, seeds are good for the diabetes. We were both taking it. He talked about being advised to eat them raw with a glass of water. My in-laws actually grind up the seeds and eat a spoonful with breakfast. I soak my seeds overnight and eat them with the water in the morning. I used to eat them the first thing in the morning, but based on something my dad said, I now eat them with breakfast. My experience is that the effects are there whichever method you choose. So eat some seeds and drink lots of water. And control your diet and get some exrcise. The Methi seeds are not any miracle pill, there is none.

I am spending a week with my in laws and they have some older family visiting from India. As usual in such a setting we always discuss health especially speculating why I would have gotten diabetes at such a young age. So in all this, there seems to be a great amount of talk about methi seeds. These are seeds of the plant also known as fenugreek in other parts of the world. The latest consensus from these folks seems to be that if you start eating a spoon of this stuff each morning, you are bound to loose weight. So when I get back home in a couple of days, I am going to go back to a tougher regimen of food and bring back overnight soaked methi seeds into my diet. Luckily, I have managed my food intake well while I am here. I have not gained a single pound. But it was achieved with a lot of starvation. I am trying to keep a four hour gap between meals and no carbs after 8:00 pm.

For the last two months I have been running a test on fenugreek seeds. Back in India, one of the traditional remedies has been to eat fenugreek seeds. In the local language, Hindi, they are known as Methi Seeds. What do I do? Every night I take a spoonful of the seeds and soak it in water. Every morning first thing after I wake up and check my fasting sugars, I eat these soaked seeds. They can be bitter but over time you adjust to them. I just drink all the water and chew up the soaked seeds. Sometimes I need more water to push them down. Results I feel like my post breakfast sugars are down from where I used to be. My feeling is a drop of about 10-20 point. Hypothesis I suspect that the fenugreek seeds probably have some vitamins or minerals that help, but a lot of the help is from the fact that they are so high in fiber. Eating lots of natural fiber in the morning helps the gut get used to consuming sugars slowly. Also I end up drinking atleast a big glass of water. I have hear that ...