Bill (San Fernando, Philippines) on 11/18/2013:

I read your article on Bitter Melon with particular interest. My partner is a Filipina and she regularly eats bitter melon or ampalaya (at least twice weekly) in soups and in stir fries with fish and vegetables. What's more, we grow ampalaya or bitter melon in our garden. I confess that I find ampalaya a very bitter and unenjoyable food to eat!! So my own way is simply to combine Tinospora cordifolia (known as Heart Vine or Heavenly Elixir) together with Chanca piedra for the same benefits and more. I recently harvested a large batch of Chanca piedra from my garden. I simply dried out this herb, cut it up into smaller pieces and stored it in a large sealed herb jar. Whenever I take it I either supplement this herb as a tea or decoction. This periodic regimen (together with other nutrients such as daily humic acid, alkalizing, dessicated liver, lugols iodine etc) seems to have kept me slim and trim as well as healthy.

I know the benefits of ampalaya well, since there is a blight of diabetes in the Philippines and all the the locals seem to make a good habit of eating this herb regularly in their diets. Ampalaya is useful against both diabetes and heart disease. But I would not recommend that you take it as a food -- better to make the juice and supplement it that way I think.