Cinnamon linked to improved blood glucose response

Cinnamon, allspice, bay leaf, cloves, nutmeg, witch hazel, oregano and black and green tea have been shown to help control blood glucose levels.

Of these, cinnamon has been shown to be the most bioactive.

Type 2 diabetes is associated with reduced responsiveness to insulin in the body, resulting in poor control of blood glucose levels.

Researchers in Sweden, aiming to understand how cinnamon affects blood glucose levels, measured the rate of stomach emptying in 14 healthy subjects, after they consumed a rice pudding with and without cinnamon.

They found the addition of cinnamon slowed the rate at which food emptied from the stomach, but they also found increases in blood glucose levels were slowed to a much greater degree.

They surmised the slower stomach emptying only partially explained the lowered rate of increase in blood glucose levels.

To try this at home you would need to like cinnamon a lot: the researchers added 6g of cinnamon to 300g of rice pudding – that’s a tablespoon of cinnamon in 1 1/4 cups of rice pudding.

Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, July 2007