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Tribal & Herbal Medicine Uses of Bitter Melon

Bitter melon, scientific name Momordica charantia, has been used in tribal medicine practices and in herbal remedies for many years. Bitter melon may also be called African cucumber, balsam pear, or bitter gourd. While the taste is as bitter as the name implies, the potential benefits of consuming bitter melon are considered by some people to be well worth incorporating this fruit into their diet.

  1. Tribal Uses

    • In tribal use, bitter melon is often used as a folk remedy for many different ailments. Bitter melon is used as a treatment for dysentery, colitis, diabetes, fevers, intestinal problems including intestinal worms, and jaundice. Tribal members ingest bitter melon in different ways. Eating the fruit as part of a salad or other dish is most common, but in some cases a juice made from bitter melon may be used. Ayurvedic medicine practitioners in India prescribe bitter melon for patients, most notably for diabetes prevention. Indigenous Amazon tribes frequently use bitter melon as a treatment and even as a cure.

    Herbal Medicine Use

    • Bitter melon is used in herbal medicine as both a treatment and as a preventive medicine. The compounds in the bitter melon fruit may have antidiabetic, antibiotic, antimutagenic, antioxidant, antiviral, and immune-system enhancing qualities. The most common herbal medicine use of bitter melon is its use as a diabetes prevention medicine. Since bitter melon may have the ability to lower the blood sugar levels, it can help prevent diabetes from developing.

    Rare Herbal Medicine Uses

    • While there is not any definitive proof at this time that bitter melon can cure or help prevent cancer or the HIV virus, it is used as a prevention for both diseases by some herbal medicine practitioners and patients. A specific protein, M charantia ribosome inactivating protein, contained in the bitter melon fruit may possibly help to prevent certain viruses, AIDS among them. MAP30 (Momordica Anti-HIV Protein) may inhibit the replication of the HIV in the most severely infected cells in the body and it is therefore has possible applications in HIV and AIDS therapy, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. It is possible that cancer can be slowed or prevented with the use of bitter melon. Bitter melon juice may have the effect of killing cancer cells without damaging healthy cells. Dr. Pratibha Nerurkar, associate professor of molecular biosciences and bioengineering at University of Hawaii at Manoa, stated in a March 2010 interview "I don't believe that it will cure cancer, it will probably delay or perhaps have some prevention."

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