Cinnamon is the brown bark of the cinnamon tree, which when dried, rolls into a tubular form known as a quill. It is available in either its whole quill form (cinnamon sticks) or as ground powder. Cinnamon is one of the oldest spices known.
It turns out that cinnamon is much more than just a spice . . . it has demonstrated great medical application in preventing and combating diabetes. According to cellular and molecular studies conducted at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Iowa State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture . . . Cinnamon plays the role of an insulin substitute in type II diabetes.

This initial discovery was made quite accidentally, by Richard Anderson at the US Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland.

"We were looking at the effects of common foods on blood sugar," he told New Scientist. One was the American favourite, apple pie, which is usually spiced with cinnamon. "We expected it to be bad. But it helped," he says.

Anderson's team found that people who eat apple pie have a significantly lower probability of getting Type II diabetes. Upon further examination, he isolated cinnamon as the substance in the apple pies that was preventing the diabetes.

They recently completed a human study with associates in Pakistan using cinnamon. Their study included 60 Pakistani volunteers (30 men and 30 women ranging in age from 44 to 58 years) with type 2 diabetes, who were not taking insulin. Subjects were divided into six groups. For 40 days, groups 1, 2 and 3 were given 1, 3 or 6 grams of cinnamon per day, while groups 4, 5 and 6 received placebo capsules.

The results were quite remarkable:

• All three of the groups given cinnamon showed reduced blood sugar levels.
• Collectively, all three levels of cinnamon resulted in:
  • reduced blood sugar levels by by 18-29%,
  • reduction of triglycerides by 23-30%,
  • reduced LDL cholesterol by 7-27%,
  • reduced total cholesterol by12-26%.
• Even the group with the lowest amount of cinnamon (1 gram per day),
  produced an approximately 20% drop in blood sugar.
• When daily cinnamon was stopped, blood sugar levels began to increase.
• No significant changes were seen in those groups receiving placebo.

The researchers' concluded: "Including cinnamon in the diet of people with type 2 diabetes will reduce risk factors associated with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases."

"I don't recommend eating more cinnamon buns, or even more apple pie . . . there's too much fat and sugar," says Anderson."The key is to add cinnamon to what you would eat normally."

• Cinnamon triples insulin's efficiency
• At least 1/2 teaspoon is critical to "soften" the cell membranes.

Further studies have have confirmed cinnamon's ability to improve insulin activity; and have led to the discovery of cinnamon's active ingredient; as well as an understanding of it's structure, and the mechanism by which it enhances insulin activity.

Using nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectroscopy, the Anderson team was able to describe the chemical structure of a molecule with "insulin-like" activity in cinnamon, as a water-soluble polyphenol compound called methylhydroxychalcone polymer (MHCP).

Dr. Anderson discovered that MHCP can stimulate glucose uptake by our cells. It can even help in the synthesis of glycogen, a polymer of glucose that our bodies produce as a means of storing energy for later use, when it is depolymerized back to glucose. Producing adequate amounts of glycogen is a principal function of blood sugar metabolism, and MHCP can help. Anderson notes . . . "The chemical is very easily obtained." One of his colleagues tried soaking a cinnamon stick in tea. "He isn't diabetic . . . but it lowered his blood sugar." said Anderson. The Anderson team was awarded patents related to MHCP in 2002.

In their latest paper, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Anderson et al. conclude that MHCP mimics insulin, has effects similar to that of insulin and works almost as well as insulin. He asserts that both of these substances work by chemically modifying our cells' insulin receptors in a manner that activates them to do their job, which is to allow glucose molecules to pass through the cell wall into the insulin cascade. He also discovered that when MHCP and insulin act together, the effect is synergistic, i.e., the total effect is greater than the sum of its parts." They characterize the insulin-enhancing complexes in cinnamon as "a collection of catechin/epicatechin oligomers that increase the body's insulin-dependent ability to use glucose roughly 20-fold".

Some scientists had been concerned about potentially toxic effects of regularly consuming cinnamon. This new research shows that the potentially toxic compounds in cinnamon bark are found primarily in the lipid (fat) soluble fractions and are present only at very low levels in water soluble cinnamon extracts, which are the ones with the insulin-enhancing compounds.

The work at UCSB has focused on the way cinnamon operates at cellular and molecular levels, looking at how it works with the cell's insulin receptor and other proteins involved in the action of insulin. Both test tube and animal studies have shown that compounds in cinnamon not only stimulate insulin receptors, but also inhibit an enzyme that inactivates them, thus significantly increasing cells' ability to use glucose.

Don Graves of UCSB (a former professor of Anderson) independently corraborated Anderson's findings that MHCP can effect insulin signaling in fat cells. "Cinnamon itself has insulin-like activity, and can potentiate the activity of insulin, " said Graves "The latter could be quite important in treating those with type II diabetes. Cinnamon has a bio-active component that we believe has the potential to prevent or overcome diabetes."

Additionally, cinnamon was found to be a very powerful antioxidant with the ability to neutralise free radicals, often elevated in diabetics, helping to minimize oxidative stress which plays such a big role in the disease. In fact, when compared to six other antioxidant spices (anise, ginger, licorice, mint, nutmeg and vanilla) and three chemical food preservatives (BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole), BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene), and propyl gallate), cinnamon prevented oxidation more effectively than all the other spices (except mint) and more effectively then any of the chemical antioxidants.

Graves said that other major diseases could possibly be helped by cinnamon. For example one prospect is pancreatic cancer, a disease in which abnormal amounts of insulin are produced by the pancreas in response to the cancer tumor causing insulin resistance in the cells of the body. The resistance prevents glucose availability to the cells. Graves believes that cinnamon might help overcome this resistance. "It's speculative but exciting," he said.