Gymnemic acid health benefit to lower cholesterol and blood lipids, how well does it work?

Gymnemic acids are a mixture of triterpene glycosides extracted from the leaves of gymnema Sylvestre and believed to be the active ingredients. Gymnema sylvestre is regarded as one of the plants with potent anti diabetic properties. This plant is also used for controlling obesity in the form of Gymnema tea and supplements. The active compounds of the plant are a group of acids termed as gymnemic acids. It has been observed that there could be a possible link between obesity, Gymnemic acids and diabetes. Gymnemic acids are the saponins with a triterpenoid structure contained in Gymnema sylvestre leaves and have hypoglycemic effects. Gymnemic acid  is known to inhibit the intestinal absorption of glucose in human and rats.
   Extracts of gymnema plant are widely used in Australian, Japanese, Vietnamese and Indian folk medicine. You can purchase Gymnema Sylvestre plant extract 400 mg pill online.

Biochemical actions of gymmenic acids
Gymnemic acids inhibit rabbit muscle glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) activity.
Insulin-releasing action of gymnemic acid may contribute to the antihyperglycemic effect by the leaves of Gymnema sylvestre.
A high dose of gymnemic acid ingestion increases fecal cholesterol and cholic acid derived bile acid excretion.
Gymnemic acid interacts with glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), a key enzyme in glycolysis.

In vitro production of gymnemic acid from Gymnema sylvestre (Retz) R. Br. ex roemer and schultes through callus culture under abiotic stress conditions.
Methods Mol Biol. 2009; Ali Ahmed AB, Rao AS, Rao MV. Department of Plant Science, School of Life Sciences, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India.
Plant secondary metabolites have enormous potential for research and new drug development. Many secondary metabolites have a complex and unique structure and their production is often enhanced by biotic and abiotic stress conditions. Gymnemic acid (C(43)H(68)O(14)), a pentacyclic triterpenoid isolated from the leaves of Gymnema sylvestre, exhibits potent inhibitory effect on diabetes. The gymnemic acid content is determined by chromatographic methods: Camag HPTLC system equipped with a sample applicator Linomat IV and TLC scanner and integration software CAT 4.0. In HPLC C(18) (ODS) reverse phase column; water 486 UV detector; mobile phase, water/methanol (35:65, HPLC grade) + 0.1% acetic acid are used. Sample (20 microL) is applied with a flow rate of 1 mL/min and read at 230 nm with UV detector. The production of gymnemic acid is significantly higher in callus treated with 2,4-dichloro phenoxy acetic acid (2,4-D) and kinetin (KN). The blue light increases gymnemic acid accumulation upto 4.4-fold as compared with fluorescent light treatment and out of which 2.8 is found in leaves. Gymnemic acid is isolated from callus, grown under stress conditions followed by preparative TLC, simple and reproducible character based on HPTLC and high performance liquid chromatography.

5htp home