Guava juice is a lesser known healthy food that’s seen as exotic or foreign. But did you know that it grows naturally in the United States? Researchers have also found evidence that adding guava juice to your diabetes mellitus diet can have beneficial effects on your blood sugar levels.
How Can You Make Guava Juice?
Despite its exotic-sounding name, you can make guava juice the same way as any other fruit juice – by juicing the fruit it comes from. Guava you can buy is usually a green fruit with apple-like characteristics. It has an edible peel that protects the red meat of the fruit. But unlike an apple, the inner part of the guava has multiple seed-filled chambers which take up the majority of the fruit’s inner area. You can juice guava just like you would juice an apple!
If you’re wondering if the fruit is hard to find, you’ll be happy to know you can buy guava from your local health food store or whole foods market. Guava has been growing in the tropical areas of the Americas for centuries – even in Florida, where it grows both wild and cultivated. The fruit also matures during all seasons (but is harvested best in summer), which makes it readily available. (This also makes it cheaper to buy guava or guava juice during the summer because it’s more plentiful.)
Guava Juice Can Lower Your Blood Sugar Levels and Other Diabetes Mellitus-sensitive Parameters
Guava juice has been used as a remedy in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) since ancient times. Researchers explored its blood sugar-lowering effects on mice and found that it has the same, but weaker effect as metformin and chlorpropamide. Both normal and diabetes mellitus-induced mice experienced lower blood sugar levels after they were administered 1 gram of guava juice per 1 kilogram of body weight.
When tested in clinical trials, researchers found that guava juice lowered blood sugar levels in non-diabetic and diabetes mellitus patients.
If you decide to eat guava rather than drink guava juice to help treat diabetes mellitus, researchers caution that the effects can be different. They found that eating guava without the peel lowers blood pressure and blood sugar, total cholesterol, and triglyceride levels. But if you eat guava with the peel, it still lowers your blood pressure and blood sugar levels, but it also raises your total cholesterol and triglyceride levels. From these results they recommend eating guava without the peel if you choose to eat the fruit instead of simply drinking the guava juice.
Guava Juice Is Also a Healthy Drink Overall
Whether or not you have diabetes mellitus, drinking guava juice daily can benefit your health. A single averaged-sized guava gives you 0.8 grams of protein and 792 IU of vitamin A. That’s about three times more protein of a single apple. It also has only 51 calories, whereas one apple has 95! It’s also superior to an orange when it comes to vitamin C because it gives you 183.5 milligrams, which is 500 percent more than what’s in one average orange. It also has more than half the potassium content of a banana – 284 milligrams.
Guava Juice Is More Popular Than You Think – And You’ve Probably Already Had It!
According to the University of Florida, guava juice is one of the major ingredients that manufacturers often use in their juice blends as part of the processing process. Chances are – if you’ve ever enjoyed a commercial juice blend, you’ve had some guava juice.
Don’t be scared to add guava juice to your diabetes mellitus diet. Doing so has been proven to help you manage your blood sugar levels. But if you prefer to eat the fruit, remember to eat it without the peel to help prevent any increase in your cholesterol and related levels. And if you don’t have time to make guava juice, you can also buy 100 percent natural guava juice at the store.
References:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6660217
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27790420
sarasota.ifas.ufl.edu/fcs/FlaFoodFare/Guava.pdf
