CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1.Background Idea
Blood sugar, or commonly known as blood glucose, is an amount of glucose that resides
in blood which comes from the food and carried through the bloodstream to provide energy
to all cells in the body. The body formed glucose from protein, fat, and, in largest part,
carbohydrate as the main source of energy and digest them into sugars. Insulin acts as a
“bridge”, allowing the sugar to go from the blood into the cell and when the cell uses the sugar
for energy, blood sugar levels go down.
In many cases, blood sugar content often exceeds its normal levels, even though the amount
of sugar in blood changes throughout the day and night. Some people may encounter their
problems in blood glucose either in their pancreas producing insulin or the cells using insulin,
or both, resulting in a higher sugar content in the blood which called as diabetes
(hyperglycemia). Diabetes is also the cause of many harmful and costly complications such
as heart disease and stroke.
South-East Asia is home to one fifth (19 %) of the total number of people with diabetes in
the world based on the International Diabetes Forum, including Indonesia, which ranked 6th
for number of people with diabetes (18-99 years) in 2017. This number keeps increasing and
without any appropriate treatment, estimation of people who have diabetes and pre-diabetes
will increase from 84 million in 2017 to 156 million by 2045. Surprisingly, with those
relatively high numbers, South-East Asia has the second lowest diabetes related expenditure
per person with diabetes, totaling only USD 9.7 billion. This issue persists as the fact that the
treatment and prevention in diabetes are still lacking in awareness and more than half of the
population are still haven’t diagnosed which at a higher risk in developing serious disease.
A lot of South-East Asia countries are developing countries like in Indonesia, diabetes is
mostly suffered by middle to lower class society where the preventions and treatments are still
lacking due to financial status and educations. Most of the people at a young age doesn’t
realize that there’s a probability of them to suffer from pre-diabetes because of their lifestyle,
especially in Asians, where the main dish is rice that contributes a lot in blood sugars. As
blood sugar will most likely rise up and downs through food and beverages, there’s no real
diet that can maintain the number of blood sugar inside the body, hence to lower/increase the
levels. Only preventions on eating/drinking high-sugar content and consuming low carb intake
that have been done to prevent the increasing of blood sugar level.
Based on those conditions, we would like to make the solution by developing a
beverages/drink that can decrease the amount of blood sugars that everybody can afford, using
100% herbal remedies to replace chemical ingredients, and can be consumed on daily basis.
Out of all herbs, we choose Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa L.) which has been proven through
several research and clinical trials as the best in lowering the amount of blood sugar. The plant
itself is also available in Indonesia, and already used as a herbal remedy throughout the
centuries.

1.2. Product Usage

This product will serve as a daily/complementary drink for those who has diabetes,
alongside with the healthy diet to reduce the blood sugar to its normal level. There are also
several additional features to cover the problems explained above to meet the consumers’
needs such as affordable, easy to drink with good taste, and environmental and health friendly
from using herbs as the main ingredients.

DAFPUS
Rosemary, Rosidah, Haro, G., 2014. Antidiabetic Effect of Roselle Calyces Extract (Hibiscus
Sabdariffa L.) in Streptozotocin Induced Mice. International Journal of PharmTech
Research : Vol. 6 no. 5