Vol. 11, Special Issue 10 (2022)

Author(s):
Mridusmita Borthakur, Dr. Sanjoy Borthakur and Dr. Ranjit Kumar Saud

Abstract:
Diabetes Mellitus is a chronic metabolic disease which is characterized by high levels of sugar in the blood. The number of people with diabetes in India has increased from 26 million in 1990 to 65 million in 2016. Environmental and lifestyle changes resulting from industrialization and migration to urban environment from rural settings may be responsible to a large extent for epidemic of diabetes in Indians. In India majority of the population depends on traditional medicines for the management of diabetes from ancient times. In the present study, effort has been made to describe perspectives and practices of diabetic patients regarding use of traditional medicines and role of traditional medicines in the management of diabetes in Jorhat District of Assam. The study was performed in both in urban and rural area and a total of 180 numbers of diabetic patients comprising of 90 each from urban and rural areas were selected. It has been recorded that majority of the respondents were sedentary worker irrespective of their localities. Of course, among urban population sedentary worker is more (74.44%) as compared to rural population (64.44%). Majority of the respondents irrespective of localities were aware that diabetes is an inherited disease and 23.33% of rural population used only traditional medicine for management of diabetes mellitus while it was observed that majority of urban (55.56%) as well as rural (48.89%) respondent used combination of conventional and traditional medicine. The Respondents were in a view that these traditional medicines have no side effects; hence can be combined with conventional medicine for effective control of blood glucose. It was also recorded that more number of diabetic patients from rural locality (23.33%) used only traditional medicine than the urban locality (6.67%) and high cost of conventional medicine was the main reason for choosing traditional medicines. Mostly the traditional medicine was used in raw form and administered once daily. Respondents from both urban and rural had mentioned 12 numbers of medicinal plants and were administered either individually or in combination. The most cited plants were Momordica charantia, Azadirachta indica, Trigonella foenum-graecum and Moringa oleifera suggesting a prominent role of these plants in the herbal treatment of diabetes in Jorhat district of Assam. Momordica charantia was the most preferred plant in both urban (48.89%) and rural (58.89%) area and Trigonella foenum-graecum was the second most popular plant used by the diabetes patients to reduce hyperglycemia in both urban (42.22%) and rural (50.00%) areas of the district.