Protective Role of Gymnema Sylvestre in Obesity

Obesity is a serious health problem in industrialized countries and it has become prevalent in developed countries as a result of changes in lifestyle, especially in eating habits. Obesity is implicated in various diseases, including type II diabetes, hypertension, cancer and coronary heart diseases. Out of the several causes that cause obesity the researcher has chosen cafeteria and high fat diets to induce obesity in male wistar rats. Because the physiological aspects of these animals closely resemble humans the results can be reliably extrapolated. Four sets of parameters, the body weight parameters, lipid profiles, oxidative stress parameters and histopathology were used to notice the devastating effect of cafeteria and high fat diets, and the protective role of saponins of G. sylvestre. In this study the protective action of the standard drug orlistat (OL), a pancreatic lipase inhibitor is also compared with that of saponins of G. sylvestre and it was found that the saponins of this herb have an edge over the standard drug OL.