It stands to reason that since a lot of drug treatments in Western medicine are rooted from plant-based sources, actual plants that are used as medicine should be considered in the same regard. Of course, that isn’t the case with most medicinal plants, as the same community that has approved its synthetic derivatives for use is the same one blocking herbal medicine from widespread use. Fortunately, there are times where science actually proves that traditional applications of medicinal plants can be verified after a thorough analysis.
Such is the case of cat’s whiskers (Orthosiphon stamineus), a herb used in traditional medicine to treat diabetes, as a study in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine has validated this claim using a novel tool to measure anti-diabetic activity. The plant is popular in Southeast Asia, where it’s used to treat a wide range of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and even rheumatism. In these areas, it’s consumed as part of a herbal infusion called Java tea, and it’s the second most popular alternative treatment for diabetes, following the bitter gourd.
For a plant that’s known as a potent treatment for diabetes, not a lot of studies have been done to verify this claim. At the time of the study, researchers claimed that their paper was the first of its kind to analyze the anti-diabetic property of cat’s whiskers using a metabolomic approach.
In the study, researchers used extracts derived from the leaves of cat’s whiskers, which were then dissolved in different solvents – namely, water (aqueous), ethanol, equal-part water and ethanol, and methanol. These were then administered to rats that were injected with streptozotocin to mimic the effects of diabetes. During the experiment, which ran for 14 days, rats were fed with their respective extracts. The researchers studied metabolic activity by testing the urine from the samples using the NRM metabolomics approach.
