[wiseguy]

Statins come from red yeast rice. The very first statin, was chemically identical to the one produced by red yeast rice, and they certainly managed to patent that.

Merck’s patent on this was the first ever filed on a naturally occurring substance and should never been allowed to happen. There are people who take red yeast rice in capsule form instead of the prescription statins. Of course red yeast rice is not a well known and accepted substance like the cinnamon we find in out kitchen cabinet. So what if, while doing research, a pharmaceutical company finds that cinnamon does indeed help lower blood sugar and it does this without needing to be processed into something that can be patented and sold for some ridiculous price? Do you think that they would release this finding to the public? Not a chance!

no that's right they looked at the results from 5 double blinded placebo trials, and concluded that there wasn't an effect. Unless of course all those researchers were lying...

DR. Richard Anderson at the US Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center has done studies that prove that cinnamon does help lower blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetics. Unless he's lying...

Anderson and coworkers published their results from a double-blind controlled trial using cinnamon and placebo with 60 adult type 2 diabetic patients. Ten patients received one gram cinnamon daily for 40 days; 10 received three grams daily; and 10 received six grams daily after meals. Thirty placebo patients received capsules of one, three, or six grams of placebo after meals for 40 days.

Blood measurements were taken at 0, 20, 40 and 60 days (20 days after last capsules). There was no significant change in blood glucose, triglycerides, total cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol among the placebo patients over the 60 days. The cinnamon patients had blood- glucose decreases of 18 to 29 percent and triglyceride decreases of 23 to 30 percent. Total cholesterol went down 13 to 26 percent, while LDL cholesterol dropped 10 to 24 percent. There was overall no significant change in HDL cholesterol levels. Ironically, some parameters were lower at day 60 than day 40, showing a deep-seated improvement in metabolic status. None of the measurements at day 60 went back up to the high levels at day 0. No side effects were observed. Thus, cinnamon has now shown excellent activity to normalize blood insulin/glucose/ lipid metabolism in people where it was impaired.

The proliferation of "natural cures" like cinnamon whose claims rely on small poorly performed trials. Are inadequately regulated as they count only as a food supplement and not a drug, and so don't have follow the strict guidelines on safety that a pharmocological drug has to.

And how many people have died, and will die, from taking these "safe" pharmacological drugs? I'm betting it's a lot more than have died from botulism and all the "natural cures" combined.