Cinnamon

[Guest guest]

Here are two internet articles that mention that ground Cinnamon is

safe at low dosages (of less than one half a teaspoon per day). The

reason is that some harmful components are in fat soluble ground

Cinnamon. The articles suggest that Cinnamon sticks (which are water

soluble) do not have the harmful ingredients, only the beneficial

elements.

One article is from a free lance writer who formerly wrote for the

Boston Globe for many years.

The second article is from a government research facility (and partly

serves the basis for the first article as well).

The articles are reprinted in full:

ARTICLE 1

Cinnamon Joins Cholesterol Battle

By: Judy Foreman

08/10/2004

A common spice already enjoyed by many Americans appears to lower

blood sugar and cholesterol, a potential boon to millions of people

with diabetes and millions of others with high cholesterol.

The spice is cinnamon. In a paper published in December in Diabetes

Care, researchers from the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center

in land, part of the US Department of Agriculture, reported on a

small, but encouraging study of 60 people with Type 2 diabetes in

Pakistan.

It showed that as little as one gram a day of cinnamon –one-fourth of

a teaspoon twice a day – can lower blood sugar by an average of 18 to

29 percent, triglycerides (fatty acids in the blood) by 23 to 30

percent, LDL (or " bad " ) cholesterol by 7 to 27 percent and total

cholesterol by 12 to 26 percent.

Although some scientists suspect that cinnamon may be toxic at very

high doses, at the small doses used in this study, the spice appears

to be safe, said , (CQ) the lead scientist in the

Beltsville lab and senior author of the paper.

To be sure, one small study on 60 people and a handful of other

studies on the biochemistry of cinnamon in cells in lab dishes

provide far too little data to recommend that Americans immediately

start wolfing down large quantities of the spice. On the other hand,

the USDA study was " impressive, " said Melinda niuk (CQ) , a

senior dietician at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

Cinnamon " can't harm in small doses, it may help, and it's not adding

calories, " she said.

She warned, however, that people with Type 2 (or adult-onset)

diabetes should monitor their blood sugar more frequently if they

take cinnamon because it could intensify the effects of diabetes

medications, including insulin.

Alice Lichtenstein (CQ), a professor of the Friedman School of

Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, added another

caveat: Don't use the news on cinnamon to indulge regularly in

calorie-laden cinnamon buns or muffins.

Scientists already have a pretty good, albeit incomplete, idea of how

cinnamon may work, at least in diabetes, said Don Graves (CQ) , an

adjunct professor of biochemistry at the University of California in

Santa Barbara and a guest investigator at the Sansum Diabetes

Research Institute, also in Santa Barbara.

An active, water-soluble ingredient in cinnamon, proanthocyanidin

(cq) , part of a family of chemicals called polyphenols that are

often found in plants, somehow worms its way inside cells.

Once inside, it helps to phosphorylate, or activate, the part of the

insulin receptor that sticks into the cell. (The other end of the

receptor sticks out through the cell membrane into the bloodstream to

catch molecules of insulin, which escort sugar to cells.)

Then, once the receptor is activated, whether by insulin or

proanthocyanidin, a cascade of chemical reactions occurs so that the

cell can use energy from sugar. Cinnamon, in other words, does

much " the same thing as insulin, " said Graves.

" Cinnamon makes insulin more efficient, " added of the USDA.

In diabetes, the problem is that insulin no longer does a good job

of escorting sugar into cells. Cinnamon " makes cells more sensitive

to the insulin that is available. And if you improve insulin

sensitivity, you improve blood lipids. Insulin is the driver. "

Dr. Sacks (CQ), a physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and

professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, is

cautious. " There are certainly substances in plants that have very

strong biological effects, so the concept is fine, " he said. And

plant derivatives " are being intensively researched at many places –

that's a hot topic. "

But people should not rely on cinnamon to replace statin drugs, used

by 20 million Americans to lower cholesterol. " Cinnamon is a lot

less effective than statins, " he said. Statins were tested in

rigorous studies on 70,000 people for five years or more. " Compared

to that, the research on cinnamon is weak. It's also curious, he

said, that the USDA study found that the beneficial effects of

cinnamon lasted for at least 20 days after people stopped taking

it. " I don't know of any drug or product whose effects persist for 20

days. "

On the other hand, Dr. Greenberg, director of the obesity

metabolism laboratory at Tufts, has reviewed the existing literature

on cinnamon and is impressed enough to be starting a collaboration

with , whose preliminary findings he described as " very

exciting and promising. "

One note of caution is that coumarin, a substance found in cinnamon,

may trigger cancer in animals. Cinnamon also contains cinnamaldehyde,

which is toxic. But these toxic components are fat-soluble, while the

beneficial ingredient, proanthocyanidin, is water-soluble. Water-

soluble extracts of cinnamon are available in which " all the bad

components are left behind, " said . (Ground cinnamon does

allow both water- and fat-soluble components to be absorbed, but at

the doses recommended, it does far more good than harm, he said;

cinnamon sticks placed in hot water release only water-soluble

components.)

It's easy to add cinnamon to the diet, by sprinkling at bit of powder

on cereal or coffee or soaking a cinnamon stick in a cup of tea. In

fact, noted , one of his colleagues who did not have diabetes

was able to lower his blood sugar just by using a cinnamon stick

regularly in tea.

There may be an indirect health benefit to be had from cinnamon, too,

according to Taiwanese scientists writing in the July 14 issue of

Agriculture and Food Chemistry. Cinnamon oil, they found, kills

mosquito larvae more effectively than DEET, a common pesticide and

mosquito repellent. The next step is to test it against adult

mosquitoes.

Judy Foreman's column appears every other week. Past columns are

available on http://www.myhealthsense.com/.

ARTICLE 2

Cinnamon, Glucose Tolerance and Diabetes

This research is performed by the

Nutrient Requirements and Functions Laboratory (NRFL)

of the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center (BHNRC).

Our studies have demonstrated that extracts of cinnamon increase

insulin activity several-fold. These measurements are in vitro or

test tube measurements of the ability of insulin to increase the

breakdown of glucose. Insulin is the hormone that controls the

utilization of the blood sugar, glucose. Improved insulin function

leads to improved blood sugar concentrations.

We have published several scientific articles on cinnamon that may be

of interest. There is a report in Hormone Research, vol. 50, pages

177-182, 1998, and a second report in the Journal of the American

College of Nutrition, vol. 20, pages 327-336, 2001, which illustrate

the mechanism of action of the cinnamon. A manuscript containing the

structures of the active components is published in the Journal of

Agricultural and Food Chemistry, vol. 52, pages 65-70, 2004

(Abstract). Our human study involving people with type 2 diabetes

demonstrating mean improvements in blood glucose ranging from 18 to

29%; triglycerides, 23 to 30%; LDL-cholesterol, 7 to 27% and total

cholesterol, 12 to 26%, is published in Diabetes Care, vol. 26, pages

3215-3218, 2003.

We have also shown that the active components of cinnamon are found

in the water-soluble portion of cinnamon and are not present in

cinnamon oil, which is largely fat-soluble. In addition to ground

cinnamon consumed directly, one can also make a cinnamon tea and let

the solids settle to the bottom or use cinnamon sticks, which make

for a nice clear tea. Cinnamon can also be added to orange juice,

oatmeal, coffee before brewing, salads, meats etc. The active

components are not destroyed by heat.

Our recent human studies indicate that consuming roughly one half of

a teaspoon of cinnamon per day or less leads to dramatic improvements

in blood sugar, cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides.

Intake of cinnamon, at these levels, is very safe and there should

not be any side effects. There are also companies selling water

soluble components from cinnamon that contain the active ingredients

with minimal amounts of the components that could be toxic at

elevated levels.

Read more about this in the April 2004 issue of the Agricultural

Research Magazine.

A. , Ph.D., CNS

Nutrient Requirements and Functions Laboratory