We wrote about the health benefits of taking cinnamon to help people with diabetes control their blood sugars years ago. Well, new research really drives home the power of cinnamon on diabetes health.
The new study, published in the Annals of Family Medicine, doesn’t actually conduct new research. Instead, it tries to make sense of all the previous cinnamon studies to determine the consistency of the research.
Looking at 10 different studies with over 540 people with type 2 diabetes, researchers concluded that there appears to be a definite benefit of taking cinnamon supplements around meal times.
Timing of the dosages in the studies varied from just before, during or just after the meal. The total daily amount of the dosages also ranged from 120mg to 3g of cinnamon.
Obviously, these studies had some clear variances in how much and when he participants took the cinnamon. Nonetheless, what is clear is that there is strong evidence that supplementing with cinnamon helps lower blood glucose levels. Additionally, another nice offshoot of this review is that cinnamon also helped lower cholesterol levels. This is a nice one-two punch for type 2 diabetics, or anyone for that matter.
There are several caveats to this review:
First, cinnamon was not found to be a replacement to type 2 medications, but rather a complement.
Second, check with your doctor to make sure you are properly monitoring your glucose levels if you begin supplementing. The last thing you want is to be unprepared for your glucose to fall too much. You may need to lower your over the counter medications.
Third, more studies are needed. This study is very positive, but the researchers advocate larger clinical studies.
Finally, there are many different types of cinnamon. The most widely used in the studies was cinnamomum cassia.
To read my previous article on cinnamon follow the link. To read further on this latest study, check out the Huffington Post.