Chicory Inulin

Chicory inulin has been added as an alternative quality source of inulin to augment increasingly scarce dahlia inulin supplies. Inulin is a phytonutrient that helps your body deal with its own insulin needs - allowing your pancreas to "catch its breath."

These days the body's over-flooded sugar moderating systems are under increasing pressure. In spite of unrelenting abuse, a tiny bit of pancreatic tissue called the islet of Langerhans keeps most of us safe from diabetic trauma. This vital group of cells, about the size of a finger, is all that stands between your health and the combined assaults of massive quantities of highly reactive refined sugars, and a shortage of soil chromium. There is a resultant shortfall in dietary chromium.

Chromium is essential for the pancreas to create enough insulin molecules to keep up with counter-balancing the effects of the flood of sugar.

We all need to supplement meaningful amounts of GTF chromium in a life-created, bioactive, ready to use form. Do not confuse genuinely natural GTF chromium with the less desirable manufactured chromium picolinate form.

Nutritional support of the blood-sugar-balancing system is essential for energy and endurance, as well as appetite moderation and the burning of excess fats.

Inulin is major constituent of burdock root, dandelion root, elecampane root, chicory root, agave, and the Chinese herb codonopsis. Botanically, inulin is a storage food in many plants.

Inulin has a mildly sweet taste, and is filling like starchy foods, but because it is not absorbed, it does not affect blood sugar levels. Despite the similarity of its name to insulin, inulin has no connection with that hormone either chemically or through physiological activity. Inulin is soluble in hot water, but only slightly soluble in cold water or alcohol, so is not present to any significant extent in tinctures.

Recent research has shown an important physiological action for inulin (Gibson, Roberfroid). Like some pectins and fructooligosaccharides, inulin is a preferred food for the lactobacilli in the intestine and can improve the balance of friendly bacteria in the bowel. Subjects in one trial were give 15 grams of inulin a day for fifteen days. Lactobacillus bifidobacteria increased by about 10% during that period. Gram-positive bacteria associated with disease declined. Bifidobacteria digest inulin to produce short chain fatty-acids, such as acetic, propionic, and butyric acids. The first two may be used by the liver for energy production, while butyric acid has cancer-preventing properties within the intestine (Spiller, 1994). Recent animal research also shows that inulin prevents precancerous changes in the colon (Reddy, 1997).

Plants with the highest inulin content, with the exception of Echinacea, have been used in ethnomedicine to improve intestinal health. Echinacea has not been traditionally consumed as a decoction or eaten in food quantities. It would not necessarily be desirable to prepare it as a tea, because key immune-stimulating constituents are only soluble in alcohol. Saussurea is commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine as a "spleen tonic" or digestive tonic. In some regions of China, Inula helenium is freely substituted for saussurea (Hsu). Note that elecampane, although pigeonholed by modern North American herbalists as a lung tonic, was used by the Eclectics both as a lung and digestive tonic (Felter). Another common Chinese digestive and "spleen" tonic that contains inulin is codonopsis, an ubiquitous ginseng substitute in contemporary traditional Chinese medicine.