An important sweet plant Stevia, first discovered in South America. Its leaves are 400 times sweeter than table sugar. Leaf extracts of stevia plants were used by natives to Paraguay as an alternative to sugar and enhancing the flavour. Scientific community carried out several studies to identity the constituent of this sweet plant. Several research studies show the presence of sweet steviol glycosides as major constituents of the leaf extracts of this plant. Steviol glycosides have different sweetness profile than carbohydrates and create no glycemic load. Several companies’ uses extracts of stevia plant in beverages and foods as an alternative sugar.
It has been reported by several scientific studies that stevia can be used safely by humans and animals suffered from both type I and type II diabetes. In Paraguay several researchers gave stevia to patients suffering from both types of diabetes, where some patients ware hypertensive also, but they found no changes in glucose level, glycated haemoglobin or blood pressure. after a treatment of three months of these patient with stevia the results of measurement of diastolic, systolic, glucose level and HbA1C were not different from the results of these patients, when they were not taking stevia. No reports were found for any adverse effects due to use of stevia plant in patients their antidiabetic medicines. Stevia has zero calories unlike other sugars like sucrose etc, so reducing the risk of obesity. In stevia cholorgenic acid is found, which decreases the glycogen conversion to glucose and also reduces the absorption of glucose, thus helps in reduction of blood glucose level. Several laboratory studies also confirmed reduction of blood glucose level due to stevia use.
Stevia plant has many other important constituents including, sterols, phenols, flavonoids and several other antioxidant compounds. Kaempferol a major polyphenolic compound, found in stevia is found to reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer by 23%. Several reports found the presence of antibacterial compounds also in stevia plant. Further it also contains certain vitamins and other minerals also.
So it can be interpreted from the previous reports that stevia plant is beneficial plant and it can be used by patients of diabetes type I and type II safely as an alternative to sugar and to reduce weight by people of all ages.