Does Cinnamon Help With Diabetes?

Cinnamon, made from the dried bark of Cinnamomum trees, is generally considered a healthy and tasty ingredient that’s safe to consume for those with diabetes. Some preliminary studies on those who have type 2 diabetes suggest that its active ingredient, cinnamaldehyde......CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE>>>>>

may improve diabetes symptoms by imitating insulin, the hormone that transports sugar from your bloodstream to your cells. People with type 2 diabetes have insulin resistance, which happens when the body becomes less sensitive to insulin, making it more difficult to clear sugar from the blood.

“Cinnamon may lower blood sugar by reducing insulin resistance, allowing the body to use the insulin present more effectively,” says Nicole Patience, RDN, CDCES, a certified diabetes care and education specialist with Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

A meta-analysis of people with type 2 diabetes suggests that taking cinnamon supplements for at least 10 weeks may help improve fasting blood sugar levels and hemoglobin A1C, a measurement of average blood sugar levels over the past two or three months that is used to diagnose and monitor diabetes.

But there are also studies that have found it doesn’t have an impact on blood sugar at all.

Patience says that cinnamon may have a positive effect for those with prediabetes, too.

“A recent [small] study looking at cinnamon supplementation in prediabetes found that glucose levels didn’t rise as much for the group taking cinnamon,” she says. Study participants were given 4 grams (g) of cinnamon (about 1½ tsp) every day for four weeks.

While some studies on cinnamon find benefits for those with diabetes, there currently isn’t enough evidence to recommend it for medical purposes.

“Studies looking at cinnamon as an adjunct therapy to help manage type 2 diabetes have presented conflicting results,” says Patience.