Cinnamon zaps blood sugar levels

[AnGe|ic]

Want to keep your blood sugar down to lower your odds of developing diabetes? Or if you are diabetic, would you like to lower blood glucose further without extra drugs?

Try eating more cinnamon. That's the advice of Richard Anderson, PhD researcher at the US Department of Agriculture.

'I know of no other natural ingredient that has the power cinnamon does in controlling blood sugar,.' he says in a radio interview with Jean Carper.

In fact, Anderson said he takes cinnamon to control his own blood sugar and normally high cholesterol with astonishing success. His cholesterol plunged 60 points after he started getting about ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon twice a day, he says.

Anderson has reported similar results in a group of 60 people with type 2 diabetes in Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association. In those getting as little as 1 gram of cinnamon (1/4 tsp twice a day), blood sugar dropped 18 to 29%, triglycerides fell 23 to 30%, LDL bad cholesterol went down 7 to 27% and total cholesterol 12 to 26%.

That's comparable to what you can expect from statin cholesterol-lowering drugs, he says. And cinnamon, unlike drugs, has no side effects.

What's also amazing, says Anderson, is that the benefits of cinnamon lasted for 20 days after subjects stopped taking it. Whereas the benefits of statin drugs vanish very quickly after you stop taking them, he says.

You can sprinkle cinnamon on cereals, put it in juices, use it in desserts such as apple pie and make tea / coffee using a cinnamon stick or sprinkle cinnamon on tea / coffee / milk.