Cinnamon Essay

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Type II diabetes is a condition where the body does not know the way to utilize insulin (1). Rather the sugar stays in the blood longer (1). The conventional treatment of Type II Diabetes is taking medications that would control blood glucose levels along with dieting and exercise. There are unconventional agents for treating Type II Diabetes, but the main one is Cinnamon. With this substance, there may be hidden health benefits like an antioxidant, reducing inflammation, antimicrobial agent, and relieving stomach issues (1). The big benefit of Cinnamon is it can have a benefit regarding blood sugar, lipid levels, and body composition (1).
How Cinnamon can mechanistically have a role in Type II diabetes is in a specific type called cassia cinnamon. In cassia cinnamon, there is a substance called hydroxychalcone, which is a polyphenolic polymer that can induce an insulin receptor by phosphorylation (2). With more induction of insulin receptors, more insulin secretion can happen, which will promote more uptake of glucose. Not only Cinnamon can stimulate more insulin receptors, it can activate a biochemical pathway of promoting glycogen storage through glycogen synthase (2). Those are a couple ways of how Cinnamon can act as an agent with Type II diabetes. There are benefits, and there are risks of ingesting Cinnamon, which will be explained next.
A risk associated with Cinnamon is excess ingestion. In Cassia Cinnamon, there is another substances called coumarin where if it is ingested excessively of 50-7000 mg/day, it can induce liver damage, and in even lower amounts with patients who have a2 preexisting liver condition (2). Not only it can cause liver damage, it can interact with other herbs and diabetic lowering m...

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...ome of the patients were on anti-diabetic medications, close to 50 percent were on anti-hypertensive medications along with 20 percent are on cholesterol medications (3).
The results of the study is based off the mean percentages changes in the glucose concentrations in the blood, and to determine whether there is significance, the alpha value is set to 0.05 (3). The mean percentage difference for the cinnamon group is 10.3 +/- 13.2 percent while for the placebo was at 3.35 +/- 14.2 percent (3). With the calculated P value of 0.046, there is a statistical significance between the placebo group and the cinnamon group (3). Concerning the other variables being tested such as the cholesterol and triglyceride levels, there is not much of a change between the two groups. Also, the subjects had no effects from cinnamon in the duration of this study.

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