For many diabetics or prediabetics, nopal is a complete replacement for prescription blood sugar drugs. It regulates blood sugar with no negative side effects and no liver damage (which is one of the primary side effects of blood sugar prescriptions). Safety note: Do not halt prescription drug use except under the direct supervision of a naturopathic physician.
Nopal is a key ingredient is many highly effective (and safe) blood sugar regulating nutritional supplements (see resources, below).
Conventional medicine, including drug companies and the FDA, do not want the public to learn about nopal because it would cost Big Pharma hundreds of millions of dollars in annual profits from diabetes drug sales. The public is intentionally kept ignorant about natural treatments for diabetes as a way to maximize corporate profits.
Most doctors have never heard of nopal, nor its blood sugar balancing effects, because the use of medicinal herbs is simply not taught in medical school. Virtually all M.D.s are nutritionally illiterate when it comes to herbs and food supplements.
Native Americans, who are suffering under an epidemic of diabetes, desperately need to be re-taught the medicinal uses of desert plants. If nopal were widely harvested and used to help regulate blood sugar in Native Americans, the diabetes rate would fall sharply. But conventional medicine, dominated primarily by rich white men, chooses to deliberately deny honest information about nutritional supplements to Native Americans. In doing so, Native Americans have been isolated from their land and their medicinal wisdom.
