Cinnamon lowers cholesterol?
Although research is still preliminary, doctors and researchers are getting excited about the diabetes and cholesterol-fighting potential of cinnamon.
Cinnamon probably “can’t harm in small doses, it may help and it’s not adding calories,” said Melinda Maryniuk, a senior dietician at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.
A small study completed last year on the possible health benefits of cinnamon was “very exciting and promising,” according to Dr. Andrew Greenberg, director of the obesity metabolism laboratory at Tufts University, who is so intrigued he has begun studying it himself.
The 40-day study, of 60 people in Pakistan with Type 2 diabetes, found that one gram a day of cinnamon — one-fourth of a teaspoon twice daily — significantly lowered the subjects’ blood sugar, triglycerides (fatty acids in the blood), LDL (or “bad”) cholesterol, and total cholesterol.
For diabetics, cinnamon “does much the same thing as insulin” biochemically, said Don Graves, an adjunct professor of biochemistry at the University of California in Santa Barbara who has studied how cinnamon works in the body.
In Type 2 diabetes, the problem is that insulin no longer does a good job of escorting sugar into cells, said Anderson of the USDA. Cinnamon “makes cells more sensitive to the insulin that is available,” he said.
An active ingredient in cinnamon, proanthocyanidin, worms its way inside cells, where it activates the insulin receptor. Once this receptor is activated, whether by insulin or cinnamon, chemical reactions occur allowing the cell to use energy from sugar.
