Most of the sugar in our diet comes from starch, mainly flour products, potatoes and rice. Each molecule of starch contains hundreds of sugar molecules linked together by weak bonds. As soon as starch reaches your intestine an enzyme called amylase unhitches those bonds and frees up the sugar, which promptly enters the bloodstream.
The diabetes drug acarbose works by inhibiting amylase and slowing the breakdown of starch to sugar. As you know, sugar that enters the bloodstream slowly requires less insulin than sugar that enters quickly even if the amount that enters is the same.
It turns out that the acetic acid in vinegar similarly inhibits amylase and can delay the breakdown of starch to sugar. (Other acids don’t do this, only acetic acid.) In the nineteenth century, doctors used vinegar to treat diabetes.
Whether or not you have diabetes, a couple tablespoons of vinegar consumed before eating starch will reduce your blood sugar level and insulin levels afterward. You don’t have to drink it straight. The combination of vinegar and oil in a salad dressing combined with the fiber in greens enjoyed at the start of a meal helps reduce blood sugar and insulin levels afterwards. Some people like to use vinegar as a condiment sprinkled on foods in place of salt.
Amylase is not needed for absorption of glucose once it is released from the starch molecule. Thus, amylase inhibitors have no effect on the absorption of the natural sugar in fruits and vegetables or added sugar in sweets.
