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Touchi Extract

The reason why “TOUCHI” extract inhibits the rise of blood sugar level

1. Screening in Natural Food for an Ingredient Gentle to Human Body
Diabetes is a disease in which insulin secreted from the pancreas does not work properly, and thus excess sugar spills over from blood to flow into urine. It may develop as a result of obesity or shortage of exercise. At the initial phase of diabetes, the patient is hardly aware of the disease, and thus disease advances without being noticed by the patient. At the later stage of the disease, it may cause various complications, and in the worst cases, lead to death. Diabetes is one of the most terrible disease.
Treatment of diabetes is variously practiced according to the type of disease, or to the diagnostic result obtained by the physician. Some patients may be prescribed a medicine, which will inhibit the activity of digestive enzymes and interfere with the digestion of carbohydrates, thereby preventing the rapid rise of blood sugar level immediately after the meal.
However, administration of such a medicine may lead more or less to a risk including coma or death in the worst cases, depending on the property of the medicine. There are many kinds of anti-diabetic drugs and they have been reported to cause a variety of adverse incidents.
In view of this, Prof. Kasai and Associate Prof. Kawabata, School of Agriculture, Hokkaido University made a research to find preventing/curing diabetes with foods. They tested one hundred or more extracts from natural food for this purpose by inhibiting the activity of digestive enzymes. Finally, they found that an extract obtained from bean fermented with Aspergillus sp., “Touchi” was what they had been screening.
Touchi What is Touchi?
Touchi is a Japanese traditional food which was introduced from China. For over 3000 years, people have eaten it as a preserved food or used it for seasoning.
Touchi extract derived This is Touchi extract derived from Touchi.

2. “Touchi” Extract Inhibits the Digestion of Carbohydrates, Thereby Lowering the Blood Glucose Level
Now, we will explain why the Touchi extract is effective for keeping the blood glucose at a low level, and for improving diabetic disease.
Starch or sugar (sucrose) is an important nutrient called carbohydrate and has a structure consisting of combined with two or more monosaccharides (glucose or fructose). In our body, however, can not absorb carbohydrates as they are. Thus, carbohydrates must be completely digested with digestive enzymes to monosaccharides before they are absorbed into our body (Fig. 1).

Starch is digested firstly with amylase contained in saliva and in the juice from the small intestine into maltose (combined with two glucose molecules). Sucrose (combined with a glucose and a fructose molecules) and maltose are called dissacharides because they have a structure consisting with two monosaccharide molecule. An enzyme called alpha-glucosidase, digests these disaccharides into monosaccharides at the mucosa in the small intestine.
The Touchi extract has a property to inhibit the activity of alpha-glucosidase. In other words, in the presence of the Touchi extract, glucose and fructose are hardly produced from maltose and sucrose at the small intestine. Thus, absorption of carbohydrates or sucrose through the small intestine is markedly retarded, which accounts for the fact that the Touchi extract inhibits the rise of blood sugar level after meal which otherwise would result. Moreover, in the presence of the Touchi extract, carbohydrates or disaccharides remaining undigested are excreted outside the body: as a result, absorption of carbohydrates or disaccharides is inhibited and the blood glucose level is kept low.

Fig.1 Digestion of Carbohydrate (starch and sucrose) in the body
The Touchi extract inhibits the activity of alpha-glucosidase, which accounts for the reduced absorption of carbohydrates or disaccharides into body. Thus, the Touchi extract not only directly keeps the blood glucose at level low but removes some causes leading to obesity. In the latter aspect, the Touchi extract further contributes to the cure of diabetes. This property to inhibit the activity of alpha-glucosidase is found only in the bean that has been fermented with Aspergillus sp, and not in raw bean, boiled bean, bean whey, nor boiled bean fermented with a strain of Bacillus subtilis natto (“Natto”, Japanese traditional appetizer). The experiment showed that this effect exists only in the Touchi extract.


In a clinical trial the “TOUCHI” extract was found to keep low the blood sugar level of diabetic patients

1. Touchi Extract showed Anti-glycaemic Effect in Rats
Now you can see the mechanism by which inhibition of the activity of alpha-glucosidase by the Touchi extract will lead to lowering of the blood glucose level. Then, we will see, in an animal experiment, the effect of Touchi extract on the blood glucose level.
Firstly, we will introduce an experiment on rats. Sucrose was administered to normal rats at a dose of 2 g/kg-body weight; and changes in the blood glucose level were followed at 30 minutes intervals up to 120 minutes. Fig. 2 shows anti-glycaemic effect in normal rats. In the this experiment rats were divided into three groups: the first group was only given sucrose, second group was given the Touchi extract at 100 mg/kg weight together with sucrose, and the last group was given the Touchi extract at 500 mg/kg weight together with sucrose. With the first group given only sucrose at 2 g/kg weight, the blood glucose rose sharply, while the rise in blood glucose level was slower in the groups which were given the Touchi extract together with sucrose. An administration of the Touchi extract significantly inhibited the rise of the blood glucose level, even at a limited amount of 100 mg/kg (Fig. 2).


2. Touchi Extract also Showed Anti-glycaemic Effect in a Clinical Trial on Borderline Diabetic Subjects
In the next test, five borderline diabetes subjects who had a slightly high blood glucose level, and took them to take 0.3g of Touchi extract and immediately thereafter 75 g of sucrose. Then, we followed their blood glucose levels at 30 min intervals up to 120 min. The blood glucose level was the same at 30 min after the intake of sucrose whether the subject took with or without Touchi extract. However, at 60 min after the sucrose intake, the blood glucose levels of those that took Touchi extract suppressed the postprandial blood glucose levels compared that took only sucrose (Fig. 3)
In another test, we applied 0.1, 0.3, 1, 3, or 10g of Touchi extract to the subjects together with sucrose, Touchi extract showed dose-dependent anti-glycaemic effects following sucrose loading. Then, confirmed even 0.3g of Touchi extract (corresponding to 15 - 20g of Touchi) to be sufficiently effective for inhibiting the rise in blood glucose after intake of sucrose.

Fig.3 Anti-glycemic Effect of Touchi Extract in Humans
3. Fasting Blood pressure of over 60% Diabetic Patients “Decrease”
In a long-term ingestion test, we asked 18 diabetic patients to take 0.3g of Touchi extract before each meal for six months. Then, we measured the levels in fasting blood glucose (FBG), insulin, HbAlc, etc., and found the diabetic symptoms improved: the fasted blood glucose level declined and other test results improved. HbAlc is derived from hemoglobin or a protein component of blood after it has been bond with sugars in blood. The level in blood of HbAlc serves as an indicator to show how many cells are destroyed with sugars in blood.
FBG and HbAlc, levels of patients decreased 1 month, and were significantly reduced at 6 month post-ingestion of Touchi extract (Fig. 4). The anti-glycemic effect of Touchi extract revealed that Touchi extract effectively attenuated the FBG level (>-10 mg/dL) in 14 patients (77.8%) and HbAlc levels (>-0.5%) in 11 patients (61.1%) after 6 months Touchi extract ingestion. Thus, Touchi extract showed moderate yet positive effects in diabetic patients for control blood glucose.

Fig.4 Anti-glycemic effect of Touchi-extract
In surprisingly, Touchi extract also showed improvement of hyperlipidemia. In diabetes patients also show hyperltriglycemia and hypercholestrolemia. Fig. 5 shows the effect of Touchi extract on hyperlipidemia. After ingestion of Touchi extract for 6 months, significantly lowered triglyceride (206 mg/dL to 150 mg/dL) and moderately decreased total cholesterol levels (218.6 mg/dL to 208.6 mg/dL). Thus, Touchi extract also showed control of lipid metabolism through lowering blood glucose. At the same time, we studied the subjective symptoms as well as the objective and hematological tests. We found no adverse incidents and confirmed that the Touchi extract is a safe supplement.

Fig.5 Anti-lipidemic effect of Touchi-extract

4. Mild Effects with No Any Side-effects
As seen above, the Touchi extract is a health promoting supplement which is effective for controlling the blood glucose level, and causes no side-effects like a medicine. A well-known risk involved in the treatment of diabetes is a sudden fall of the blood glucose level or hypoglycaemia, which may lead to dizziness or coma, or to death in the worst cases. The Touchi extract, however, does not directly work upon blood glucose, but retards the processes of carbohydrate absorption through the intestine, thereby reducing the post-meal rise of the blood glucose level. Thus, its effect is so mild that intake of it will never lead to hypoglycaemia.
Usually, the anti-diabetic drugs cause more or less their characteristic side-effects. However, the Touchi extract, being an extract obtained from natural food, does not cause any adverse incidents, nor lead to hypoglycaemia as mentioned above. The essential advantage of Touchi extract lies in its being effective in controlling the blood glucose level and at the same time being mild to the body.

These are our FOSHU products for anti-diabetes
which are derived from Touchi extracts.