Cinnamon is not only a spice rich in healthy antioxidants, it is also used to help diabetics control their blood glucose levels. While it does not completely replace other therapies, ask your doctor about integrating it into your drug treatment.
Steps
Part 1 of 3: Incorporate Cinnamon into Your Diet
Step 1. Use cinnamon instead of sugar
Because it is so tasty, it is able to replace small amounts of sugar in preparations that are cooked on the stove, in sauces, in meat dressings and in vegetable dishes. By adding this spice to sweeteners, you can reduce the amount of sugar and improve your blood sugar accordingly.
Cinnamon is considered a safe spice when used in normal quantities for food use; this means adding ½ to 1 teaspoon to your dishes, equivalent to about 1000 mg per day
Step 2. Add it to your breakfast
For example, mix some cinnamon and a small amount of agave syrup into your morning cup of oatmeal, add berries and nuts to make the first meal of the day even more nutritious. Alternatively, you can sprinkle a pinch of cinnamon on buttered wholemeal bread as well as a sprinkle of crystallized sweetener like stevia.
Cinnamon also tastes great on toast with peanut butter or sugar-free jam
Step 3. Use it in meat sauces
This spice goes well with poultry, pork and beef, it is excellent in traditional Asian ethnic dishes, marinades and salty condiments. Add as much sugar as you like to replace sugar, even whole-grain sugar, in your barbecue sauce recipes, for marinating pork strips, for berry compotes and even in marinara sauce.
Step 4. Use it as a substitute for sugar in vegetable dishes
Use cinnamon in place of brown sugar or refined white sugar in caramelized vegetable dishes, such as candied potatoes, baby carrots, or stir-fried sweet and sour vegetables. Cinnamon enriches the dish with a complex sweet flavor without causing glucose spikes.
Step 5. Add it to oven-prepared dishes
This cooking method is perhaps the easiest way to incorporate more cinnamon into your diet. If you like to make bread, muffins, energy bars, cookies or cakes at home, then know that cinnamon goes well with any type of recipe you like.
- Add cinnamon to your favorite baked preparations. You can add extra amounts of spice to the dry flour by mixing carefully to prevent lumps from forming. If the recipe already includes cinnamon among its ingredients, try to double the dose or partially substitute it for other spices (such as nutmeg).
- Sprinkle baked goods with this spice. If you've already added it in your preparation, you can use a sieve or baker's brush to cover muffins, cakes, or bread in a light layer of cinnamon as soon as they come out of the oven.
Step 6. Make sweet or savory preserves with cinnamon
Fruit and vegetable preserves are a perfect excuse to incorporate cinnamon into snacks and side dishes that would otherwise lack it. When used correctly, this spice gives a special flavor to both savory and sweet preserves.
- In apple and pumpkin recipes (cakes, creams, jams) you can abound with cinnamon.
- Add ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon to a large jar of preserves made from another type of fruit, such as peaches or strawberries.
- If you have decided to preserve or pickle salty products, you can still use cinnamon; Consider adding it to gherkins, green beans, onions, beets, and even peppers.
Step 7. Use cinnamon to flavor drinks
Try adding some to your ground coffee so your must-have morning drink will have a unique flavor. Alternatively, incorporate the spice into milkshakes, diet smoothies, and all liquid dairy preparations. These are all perfect occasions to increase your cinnamon consumption.
Part 2 of 3: Add Cinnamon Supplements to Therapy
Step 1. Consider taking supplements
If you don't want to incorporate spice into your dishes, you can always benefit from its effects thanks to supplements. You can find them in health food stores and pharmacies at affordable prices.
Step 2. Talk to your doctor before resorting to supplements
While using these low-dose cinnamon products poses no health risk, it is always wise to ask your healthcare provider for advice to make sure it does not interfere with other diabetes medicines. In fact, both the spice and the hypoglycemic agents have the same action on blood sugars and it is important to avoid that the blood sugar collapses suddenly.
Record the amounts of cinnamon you consume and your blood sugar levels using a blood glucose meter. This way you can quickly understand how much cinnamon you need to control blood sugar levels
Step 3. Consider taking a 500mg supplement per day
This dose, taken twice a day, has been shown to be effective in improving A1c (glycated hemoglobime) levels. A1c indicates the average level of glucose in the blood in the three months prior to the test, so if the glycated hemoglobin is low, it means that diabetes is under control.
Part 3 of 3: Understanding the Reasons for Cinnamon's Effectiveness
Step 1. Learn about diabetes
This term refers to a group of chronic hormonal disorders that lead to an excessive level of glucose in the blood. There are several types of diabetes. Type 1 is an autoimmune disease that occurs already in young individuals. Type 2 diabetes is an acquired disease that is generally associated with adults and the elderly but which, unfortunately, is becoming increasingly common among children. Type 2 diabetes is also the most common form. The third type of this disease is called gestational diabetes and develops in women during the second half of pregnancy; this is a relatively common problem that affects less than 10% of expectant mothers.
Some doctors believe that the condition of prediabetes is to be classified as an early form of the disease. People with prediabetes have a blood sugar that is higher than normal, but not so high as to lead to an official diagnosis of the condition. Individuals with prediabetes (also called insulin resistance) are at a serious risk of developing type 2 diabetes
Step 2. Learn how insulin alters blood sugar levels
It is a hormone produced by the pancreas and is the main chemical messenger that triggers the glucose uptake process in the cells. Insulin acts on the liver by stimulating it to transform glucose into its 'storage' form, ie glycogen. In addition, insulin is involved in a number of other functions, such as the metabolism of fats and proteins.
- All diabetics are insulin resistant. The reason they have high blood sugar is that the body's cells do not absorb the glucose that remains free in the blood. This is because the body does not respond to insulin as it should.
- If the cells become insulin resistant, then they "ignore", that is, they do not react, to the signal carried by the insulin. The consequence is a rise in blood sugar levels which, in turn, triggers further insulin production by the pancreas in an attempt to force the absorption of sugar. Unfortunately, the problem with this "jammed" mechanism is that the insulin spike has no effect on resistant cells and blood sugar continues to rise. At this point the body converts the sugar into fat and triggers a situation of chronic inflammation and other ailments, such as overt type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and heart disease.
Step 3. Learn about the mechanisms of type 2 diabetes and its traditional therapies
The most common symptoms of this condition are: increased thirst and urination, increased appetite, sudden weight gain or decrease, visual disturbances, fatigue and an increased incidence of infections. Type 2 diabetes is diagnosed by analyzing symptoms and measuring the body's ability to manage sugars.
Most cases of diabetes can be controlled with a combination of drugs (hypoglycemic drugs, blood sugar lowering drugs), diet and exercise. Some patients require insulin administration, especially in type 1 diabetics
Step 4. Learn How Cinnamon Helps In Type 2 Diabetes
Current research has found that one of the components of this spice, the polymer methyl-hydroxy-chalcone (MHCP), is able to improve the response of cells to insulin because it appears to mimic the activity of insulin itself. It also appears to work with this hormone to improve its effectiveness. MHCP also has antioxidant properties, although it is unclear whether these have any merit in cinnamon's ability to control blood sugar.
