posted
That was funny! But as Boon pointed out, the answer actually seems to be yes. Isn't that bizarre?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
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. Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
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. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
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. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
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!
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I would think she'd need carb free uses for cinnamon. Things like rice, oatmeal, etc., turn into sugars in the body.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
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*
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Everything you eat gets turned into sugars in the body -- necessary part of obtaining energy via glycolysis.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
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?)
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote: Sure, but it's a question of how much sugar you get from them.
Yes, but it's also a question of slow-release v. long-, so maybe glycemic index is a better measure?
Rice is not that bad (although I am stunned at the tiny difference between brown and white rice -- I thought brown took significantly longer to digest), and oatmeal made from scratch (NOT packets) is not bad either.
quote: (Can we have an in depth metabolism conversation? Please?)
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.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
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 ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
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! Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
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 ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
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 ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
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.
posted
Thanks for the link Noemon. My brother-in-law has Type II. You just gave me an idea for a stocking stuffer this year.
When I use to brew my own beer, I experimented with cinnamon a few times. It went really well in a porter. About half the bottles I made out of one batch, I dropped about 1/2 inch of cinnamon stick in the bottle before I capped them.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't understand. I wish there was a link to their actual paper. I don't see how a foreign spleen could teach your cells not to attack its own systems. The foreign spleen is just that, foreign, right? So it would teach your cells to not attack cells baring the markers from the donor animal, nor the receiver. For that matter, why the spleen? Isn't it more or less an immune system seive? All the production occurs in the bone marrow and maturation in the marrow and thyroid. What proteins does the spleen have? Any immunologists out there? Maybe I should just E-mail my immunology prof and get him to explain this to me.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
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. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
