"Spoonful of cinnamon helps blood sugar stay down", Reuters UK, June
20, 2007,
Link: http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUKCOL07026020070620

Adding some cinnamon to your dessert may temper the blood sugar surge
that follows a sweet treat, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Malmo University Hospital in Sweden found that adding a
little more than a teaspoon of cinnamon to a bowl of rice pudding
lowered the post-meal blood sugar rise in a group of healthy
volunteers.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
add to evidence from past studies that cinnamon may aid in blood sugar
control. However, it's too early to prescribe cinnamon as a therapy
for diabetes, a disorder in which blood sugar levels soar because the
body cannot properly use the sugar-regulating hormone insulin.

Dr. Joanna Hlebowicz and her colleagues based their findings on 14
healthy volunteers who had their blood sugar measured before and after
eating a bowl of rice pudding; each volunteer was tested after eating
plain rice pudding and after having a cinnamon-spiced version.

Post-pudding blood tests, which were taken repeatedly over 2 hours,
showed that volunteers' blood sugar rose to a lesser degree when they
had the cinnamon dessert.

One reason for the effect seems to be that cinnamon slows the rate at
which food passes from the stomach to the intestines, according to
Hlebowicz's team. Using ultrasound scans, they found that the
volunteers showed a slower rate of "gastric emptying" when they ate
the cinnamon rice pudding.

Whether people with diabetes should start spicing their diets with
cinnamon remains to be seen. One small study, Hlebowicz and her
colleagues note, found that when people with type 2 diabetes added
cinnamon to their diets for 40 days, their blood sugar and cholesterol
levels tended to dip.

On the other hand, a recent study found no such benefits among people
with type 1 diabetes.

Further studies focusing on people with diabetes are still needed,
Hlebowicz and her colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, June 2007.