This is topic Good News for Diabetics in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Cinnamon seems to regulate blood sugar levels.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Does it still work if you get all your cinnamon in the form of Pop-Tarts?
 

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Posted by Boon (Member # 4646) on :
 
Maybe so...apple pie seems to work.
 

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Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
 


Bob, that was hilarious!
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
That was funny! But as Boon pointed out, the answer actually seems to be yes. Isn't that bizarre?
 

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Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
 
It IS sort of a shame that all the really great cinnamon foods seem to be sweets. I am going to try it, though, and see how it works for me. I may just have to put cinnamon into capsules and take it that way, since I don't get to eat toast or anything like that which might be susceptible to cinnamon sprinkling.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
ak, in American cuisine, yes. But other cuisines use cinnamon (and chocolate) in savories, don't they?

Besides, if one used artificial sweeteners and cinnamon, there'd be a double benefit. The cinnamon could both mask the aftertaste, and help with the sugar levels.

Thanks for the link, Noemon. I'm going to tell my dad, and start using more cinnamon myself.
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
I make a mean oatmeal that uses lots of cinnamon (and nutmeg, and salt, and flax seeds, and walnuts, and almond slivers, and apples) but no sugar beyond what's found in the apples. I'd give you a recipe, but I pretty much just toss it all together as I'm making it, so it's different (but still tasty) pretty much every time I make it.

I don't have diabetes, myself, but there is some history of it in my family; I intend to up my cinnamon intake myself.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
Same here -- my dad has type II; I hope to keep it at bay. Not that I'm very good about it. But adding cinnamon to things is easy. Except, of course, that I already use a lot of it. I'll just have to add more.
 

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Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
 
All kinds of curries use cinnamon, ak. As do a number of stews from the same region. Didn't you say that you hadn't had Indian food before? This gives you the perfect excuse to explore!
 

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Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
 
I would think she'd need carb free uses for cinnamon. Things like rice, oatmeal, etc., turn into sugars in the body.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
Oooh, that reminds me of a cold-weather slow-cooker recipe that I need to make soon. It's vaguely curry-like. *goes off to check for needed ingredients*
 

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Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
 
*slaps forehead*

Somehow all I read was "need uses for cinnamon" and completely missed "am diabetic".
 

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Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
 
I have had a cinamon apple chicken bake before, I wonder if ak could eat that.

AJ
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
Everything you eat gets turned into sugars in the body -- necessary part of obtaining energy via glycolysis.
 

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Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
 
Thanks for the link, Noeman. My Dad is also a type II.
 

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Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
 
Sure, but it's a question of how much sugar you get from them. Starch, being repeating units of alpha-glucose yields tremendously high levels of glucose when compared to fats and amino acids. Both of which need to be go through the TCA cycle before entering gluconeogenesis (be it via pyruvate, acetyl-CoA, alpha-ketoglutarate or what have you).

(Can we have an in depth metabolsim conversation? Please?)
 

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Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
Yeah Kayla, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking.

Hmmm...I've made some delicious and nutirious Bengali dishes that use cinnamon, and consist almost entirely of vegetables. Think that would be okay for a diabetic? I've also made an Ethiopian soup that had massive amounts of cinnamon in it. I can't remember, though, what else it had. Hmmm...hard boiled eggs, I remember, and I think a tomato stock base....

I'll have to check.

I'm going to be away from an internet connection for the rest of this week, though, so it won't be until next Monday, probably.
 

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Posted by cyruseh (Member # 1120) on :
 
My mom is a diabetic, ill have to share this with her.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 

quote:

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Sure, but it's a question of how much sugar you get from them.

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quote:

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(Can we have an in depth metabolism conversation? Please?)

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Well, if I can get horrible flashbacks from my organic chem and biochem classes (which I overall enjoyed, but some parts killed me) to stop, then I'd love to participate.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
My dad found a place that sells cinnamon capsules. I'll stick to food, personally.

And apparently the research was done in 2001 -- why hasn't this gotten more coverage?
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
My Kreb's cycle has a flat tire.
 

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Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
 
Yes, unfortunately, right now I'm eating exactly nothing solid at all. I drink 5 ensure high proteins a day, and take supplements for potassium, magnesium, and calcium, plus 3gm Vitamin C a day, and 2 methylcellulose tablets. This gives me a very controlled amount of carbs and seems to be working well. My sugar is in control and I'm off insulin and just recently I've been able to go off all my diabetic drugs as well. (The ones for sugar control, I mean. I still take an ACE inhibitor to delay cardiovascular system damage, plus a couple of other drugs for non-diabetic things.)

I'm hoping that I'll be able to eat food again someday, but to tell you the truth, if I never can again it won't bother me that much. I'd much rather not be sick than eat any day!

So, yeah, recipes don't really apply to me nowadays. <grins> Maybe later, I hope. At the very least I'd love to be able to eat meat and fat and non-starchy vegetables again. I quit eating rice and bread and pasta and so on when I found out I couldn't tolerate exogenous (injected) insulin, and I don't miss it that much.

[ November 25, 2003, 06:17 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
 

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Posted by Nick (Member # 4311) on :
 
My mom has type II diabetes, and my doctor tells me that if I have more than a moderate amount of sugar daily, I'm on the road for the same thing.

This is good news for both me and my mom!

Thanks for the heads up!
 

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Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
Anne Kate, The article says the effect can be observed by soaking a cinnamon stick in tea. I know of several nice cinnamon herbal teas. These might be just the thing for you.
 

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Posted by ana kata (Member # 5666) on :
 
Rabbit, yes! As long as the cinnamon tea doesn't have either sugar or tea in it. <laughs> My regular restaurants, back when I could eat food, were used to me asking for "white tea" on chilly days, in other words, tea without the tea in it, or just boiling water. It might be the case that ground cinnamon by itself will dissolve in boiling water, to make a cinnamon tea. I think I will try that and see. I could even sweeten it with artificial sweetener and I bet it would be very tasty.

[ November 25, 2003, 07:13 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
 

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Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
I drink an orange-cardamon tea that has alot of cinnamon and no tea or sugar in it. I buy it from the food co-op in Bozeman. The cinnamon itself doesn't dissolve in water, but all the good stuff leaches out of it.

[ November 25, 2003, 07:18 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
 

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Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
This looks alot like the stuff I drink.

Chai Tea Herbal, Caffeine-Free
Ingredients:
cinnamon, cardamom,
ginger, cloves, Fennel, Licorice, Orange Peel and black pepper.

link (about 7 lines down the list)
 

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Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
 
All the Good News For Diabetics is always for type II
 

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Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
 
On the contrary, there has been an EXTREMELY promising new development on a cure for type 1.
With minor paraphrasing...

...Massachusetts General Hospital's Immunobiology Laboratory...have cured type 1 diabetes in mice.
(Nov. 14 issue of Science)
The first step...was to stop the immune system attack on islet cells with injections of TNF-alpha, a naturally occurring protein that destroys the wayward immune system cells.

Then they injected spleen cells from healthy mice...because they carry proteins that play a key role in teaching new immune cells to recognize normal tissue...[to] halt the autoimmune attack, so that transplants of islet cells would restore insulin production.

But then came a huge surprise. No transplants were needed, because insulin started to be produced by normal islet cells that unexpectedly appeared in the mice.

Some of those insulin-producing cells appeared as the few remaining islet cells in the mice multiplied -- a regeneration process that was something of a surprise to the researchers. But there was an even bigger surprise. Some of the injected spleen cells had transformed into islet cells.

[On a retrial, foreign healthy spleen cells were not injected, and apparently the spleen still produced cells which transformed to islet cells]

So the idea of re-educating the immune system not to attack friendly tissue and then regenerating cells to restore normal function could be applied to other autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

[ November 26, 2003, 01:13 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
 

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Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
 
O_o

Oooo, thanks aspectre!

quote:

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However, the scientists say, a lack of funding for the necessary human clinical trials is hampering their work.

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