Study: Red wine, tea may help diabetics

AMHERST, Mass., April 4 (UPI) -- Antioxidants found in red wine and tea may help regulate blood sugar in diabetics, U.S. food scientists say.

Kalidas Shetty, Young-In Kwon and Emmanouil Apostolidis of the University of Massachusetts Amherst suggest red wine and tea may help type 2 diabetics by inhibiting the action of alpha-glucosidase, which slows down the absorption of glucose from the small intestine.

"Levels of blood sugar, or blood glucose, rise sharply in patients with type 2 diabetes immediately following a meal," Shetty says in a statement. "Red wine and tea contain natural antioxidants that may slow the passage of glucose through the small intestine and eventually into the bloodstream and prevent this spike, which is an important step in managing this disease."

The study, published in the Journal of Food Biochemistry, finds red wine was able to inhibit the enzyme by nearly 100 percent and white wine hovered around 20 percent.

The team also tested four kinds of tea -- black, oolong, white and green -- and find extracts of black tea had the highest effect on inhibiting the activity of alpha-glucosidase, followed by white tea and oolong tea.