Can Cinnamon Spice Up Your (Diabetic) Life?

I know cinnamon as a basic spice, although truthfully, I couldn't name off-hand any particular dish in which it is a definitive ingredient, aside from say, hot cocoa.  However, I have heard rumblings of late (besides from my stomach) that it might have a salutary effect on diabetes.  But as with all thing natural & organic, there is more than meets the eye.  For instance, just as with vitamins D & E, there are various types/forms/species of cinnamon as denoted by Wikipedia.  That might explain why a review published a year ago in the Cochrane Library found no benefit for the use of cinnamon in diabetes, whether Type 1 or 2.  Of course, one could counter-argue that the Cochrane review consisted of only 10 studies involving 577 participants.

So it's rather timely that I stumbled upon another review, this time published in this month's issue of Annals of Family Medicine, in which the authors concluded that use of cinnamon in Type 2 diabetes could potentially lower fasting glucose & improve a typical lipid panel by raising HDL while lowering total & LDL cholesterol along w/triglycerides.  However, while use of cinnamon did lower fasting glucose, it did not appear to lower Hemoglobin A1c, a 3 month measure of average sugar control.  In all fairness, this review & meta-analysis also included 10 studies (perhaps the same 10?) but this time including just 543 participants.

As the authors noted, the range of doses (from 120mg/d to 6g/d) along with the short duration of individual studies (from 4-18 weeks) made the data too heterogenous to conclude anything more than a need to study the use of cinnamon more rigorously in diabetes.  And as I've learned while perusing several websites in preparing to post this blog, we also have to become more specific as to which cinnamon plant we are referring as well as develop a potentially more objective measure than just dose/weight, since the potential benefit may be derived from the 0.5-1% that consists of aromatic oils.

Bottom line, for now, there may be some truth in those miraculous TV ads.  However, to be safe, don't buy your cinnamon without knowing its source (unlike Reumofan for which we have no idea of its manufacturer).

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