With warm and sweet flavors, cinnamon is the spice par excellence for the holiday season. But did you know that it is also full of benefits for your health? Focus on its main advantages.
- Cinnamon is a spice known for its antioxidant properties.
- It can be used to flavor many dishes and drinks, both sweet and savoury!
Small biscuits, soups, dishes in sauce, herbal teas, hot chocolates… Cinnamon flavors many dishes and drinks, especially during the winter season. Its warm, woody and slightly sweet flavor comforts and plunges some into happy childhood memories. But the advantages of this spice do not stop there: cinnamon is also very good for your health!
Neurodegenerative diseases: a spice that protects the body
Anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antiseptic, antibacterial… Cinnamon has a strong protective potential for the body. Very rich in antioxidants that prevent free radicals from oxidizing the cellular organisms of the body, it helps to slow down the premature degradation and aging of our cells.
On this subject, several studies have shown that it has properties to fight against neurodegenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Work carried out in vitro by the University of Santa Barbara in California and published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease in 2013, showed that the spice was able to slow the onset of Alzheimer’s disease thanks to the presence of cinnamic aldehyde and epicatechin compounds. Other research conducted by Rush University Chicago Medical Center in 2014 concluded that cinnamon has the ability to reduce brain damage caused by Parkinson’s disease. Finally, a third study, the results of which were published in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacologysuggests that the spice could improve memory abilities but also slow down cognitive decline.
Type 2 diabetes: cinnamon helps regulate blood sugar
We already told you about it in a previous article: this spice would also have the power to regulate blood sugar, and to help prediabetic patients to slow down the progression of the disease towards type 2 diabetes. A discovery made by researchers from the Division of Endocrinology at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and the Division of Endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society in 2020. On this occasion, these researchers also recalled that other studies had shown that the spice could help reduce bad cholesterol.
Fats: a spice for weight loss?
Would cinnamon also help reduce fat? This is in any case what is shown by another research, the results of which were presented during the scientific sessions of the American Heart Association in 2017. By feeding rats a very high-fat diet, with or without cinnamon consumption, they found that the animals in the cinnamon-supplemented group weighed less than those who did not consume the spice. The authors’ hypothesis? Cinnamon, thanks to its phenolic constituents, would activate the body’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory systems, which would slow down the fat storage process.
