Cinnamon

[Cazbrook]

Hi guys

I have been living with type 2 Diabetes for a number of years now..i am on Metformin and Stigalaptin...I have recently spoken to my friend who swears by Cinnamon as a blood sugar lowerer!!!

I have seen tabs that can be bought from health food shops...would using these as well as my meds help? Anyone tried and had any effect?

Thanks

 

[Northerner]

Hi Cazbrook, welcome to the forum 🙂 The world is full of miracle ingredients to help you 'naturally' lower your blood sugar levels, but most of them are spurious unfortunately. It's not really proven either way whether cinnamon can help, see for example:

http://www.diabetes.org/news-resear...-has-no-benefit-for-people-with-diabetes.html

Just out to take your money I'm afraid. What definitely helps is controlling your carbohydrate intake and eating the sort of foods (in the sort of quantities) that your body can tolerate well. Also, regular exercise will improve your insulin sensitivity far more than a cinnamon pill, and make you fitter and healthier into the bargain 🙂

Do you test your blood with your own meter to measure the effect of different foods on your levels?

 

[yorksman]

This has been shown in research, for example, Cinnamon Improves Glucose and Lipids of People With Type 2 Diabetes but as Norther points out, there is research to the contrary. Cinnamon is only one of many things claimed to have an effect on glucose and lipid levels. Straight alcohol too will lower blood glucose as will cider vinegar and as will not eating sugar. Many people swear by avoiding all carbs altogether.

Ultimately, what type 2s attempt to do is find a balanced diet, ie one that they can live with happily and which is nutritious and which provides them with things like fibre and essential vitamins etc.

Where things like cinnamon are good are as additives to regular meals. I notice many people add it to porridge for breakfast. What you can't do though is add it to a sweet biscuit on the basis that the cinnamon will cancel out the flour and the sugar.

The effects of these blood sugar reducing agents are short lived. Daily exercise too will drop your blood sugar levels and your lipids, dramatically in fact, but you can't live on cinnamon and cycling. But if you can incorporate them into a sensible diet, do so. It is all about changing what you eat and the things you do.

 

[Cazbrook]

Re: Cinammon

Thanks for your replys...guess we are all looking for a miracle cure! But yes I think the healthy approach of reasonable diet and exercise etc is the best way forward...I can be a bit naughty sometimes but try and pull it back when I am...only human...

 

[Rupert]

quality research needed

I have a commercial interest in cinnamon and I follow the research into its health benefits carefully. It frustrates me that the research on this subject, including the piece that you have linked to, is so piecemeal and inevitably inconclusive. It could be that there is a real, natural benefit here just waiting to be verified.

 

[trophywench]

Well it's up to you to fund the research then - it's what drugs companies do and that's what you are up against.

But I did think someone had actually done some research about 20 years ago and proved either that you had to eat your own body weight OR that it was some substance in the bark, that did the reduction, which would have to be commercially extracted which wouldn't be commercially viable and still only had a very small effect.

Or was that turmeric not cinnamon? LOL

There have been so many claims for different substances over the years for T2 'cures' I lose track !