[Puppypants]

Thanks for the advise, but I think all that charting and graphing might raise my BG!! I am a quality coordinator by trade, and keep all kinds of charts and stat data, and carrying that kinda work home might be too much!

As long as my numbers stay this low, I don't feel like I should upset the apple cart and change anything right now!

[georgepds]

Here is an article on it.
GI News

The short answer is 6 g of Cinnamon cassia (the kind available in the US). Read the comments below the article, the articles itself is a bit screwy and misleading. The guy they quote likes "true Cinnamon" whereas all the documented research used Cinnamon cassia

[pooh3465]

Cinnamon is actually very good at bringing your blood sugars down and they sell it as a suplement at wal mart. I first heard about it on the diabetes talk show they have on my cable station. The man talking about it was a doctor and his wife has diabetes so he has done a lot of research on it. The station was trying to sell a book he wrote. I never bought that but I did try his suggestion of the cinnamon capsules and he was not joking it shot my sugars down really fast. I took it at breakfast and before lunch I was having a reaction so you may have to do a bit of research yourself on how you will react to it but it really does work.

[pdxdennisj]

I think this article from MyDiabetesCentral.com covers the science angle:

"Cinnamon Update
by David Mendosa
Monday, May 22, 2006
Most scientists won’t admit it, but some of them are a lot like journalists. Some people in both groups seem to get their jollies and make their reputations by debunking the work of others.

Cinnamon is now important enough for glucose control that the debunkers have jumped on it. A group of five scientists in Maastricht, The Netherlands, carefully studied the effects of cinnamon and found that it doesn’t work.

They found that “Cinnamon supplementation does not improve glycemic control in postmenopausal type 2 diabetes patients”. The Journal of Nutrition published their research in its April 2006 issue.


text continues below
advertisement

Specifically, they contradicted “Cinnamon improves glucose and lipids of people with type 2 diabetes” by Richard A. Anderson and his associates at the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center in Maryland and in Peshawar, Pakistan. Earlier I have written about Dr. Anderson’s work on this blog and my website.

The Dutch scientists used the same type of cinnamon, cinnamomum cassia (popularly known as Chinese cinnamon, but from Indonesia), as Dr. Anderson’s group. They used 1.5 grams per day, 50 percent more than the other group’s lowest effective dose. Both studies met the highest research standards of being double-blind, placebo-controlled trials. Subsequently, however, the debunkers have themselves been debunked. A group of six scientists at the University of Hannover in Germany found that cinnamon does reduce blood glucose.

These scientists studied the “Effects of a cinnamon extract on plasma glucose, HbA, and serum lipids in diabetes mellitus type 2”. The European Journal of Clinical Investigation published this research in its May 2006 issue.

Again, it seems to be excellent science as it is also a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. They did, however, use twice as much cinnamon as the Dutch group, 3 grams per day.

If this leaves you confused, you are not alone. We can’t get scientists to agree any better than we can anyone who writes.

Still, I doubt if anybody is totally relying on cinnamon for diabetes control. A nutritious diet, weight loss, exercise, and prescription drugs are the usual order in which we implement our control strategies. Herbs, like cinnamon, with their erratic and less well tested effects, are purely supplemental.

If you like the taste of cinnamon, as I do, it doesn’t matter what the debunkers write. By all means continue to sprinkle it on some of the foods you eat. It may or may not help us to control our blood glucose. But we know how to do that anyway."

[xMenace]

Cinnamon questionable as diabetes therapy

Though some studies have hinted that cinnamon may aid blood sugar control, it’s too soon to recommend the spice for people with diabetes, according to researchers.

Their study of 43 adults with type 2 diabetes found that cinnamon supplements did nothing to change blood sugar, insulin or cholesterol levels over three months.

The findings stand in contrast to some past studies that have suggested cinnamon may help with diabetes control. In one study of people with type 2 diabetes, for example, researchers found that those who added some cinnamon to their daily diets had a dip in their blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

Lab research suggests that cinnamon may make body cells more sensitive to insulin, a hormone that shuttles sugar from the blood into cells to be used for energy. Type 2 diabetes develops when cells lose their sensitivity to insulin. There’s also evidence that cinnamon slows digestion, which can temper the blood sugar rise that follows a meal.

In the new study, researchers at the University of Oklahoma assigned type 2 diabetics to take either cinnamon capsules or a placebo every day for three months. The cinnamon group took two capsules a day, each of which contained 500 milligrams of the spice. The placebo group took capsules containing wheat flour.

In the end, there were no differences in the groups’ average levels of blood sugar, insulin or cholesterol, according to the researchers, led by Dr Steve Blevins. The reason for the conflicting findings from this and earlier studies may have to do with differences in the study groups, Blevins and his colleagues explain.

Most patients in the current study, for example, were on various diabetes drugs; in an earlier study that found cinnamon to lower blood sugar, no patients were on any of these drugs.

The researchers conclude that more studies are needed to see how various factors — like overall diet and medication use — affect any benefits of cinnamon in managing diabetes. “Until then,” they write, “cinnamon cannot be generally recommended for treatment of type 2 diabetes in an American population.” reuters

[Scarlett]

Wow-whenI was writing a lot way back when-I remember posting the same question since I'd been having the same effect with cinnamon-now I use it daily in my coffee but I'm not nearly as inquisitive as some here-I like it! That's all...some days my BS's are high, some they're normal and others are low-......the more fiber though...(now there's the ticket!!!)