Cinnamon

Besides its uses in cooking, cinnamon is actually very beneficial to your overall health. The benefits stated below are seen through consuming 0.5 – 2 teaspoons of cinnamon per day.

• Cinnamon is a powerful anti-oxidant; anti-oxidants protect your body from oxidative damage caused by free radicals.
• In conjunction to this, cinnamon is also a superb anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is important in fighting infections and repairing tissue damage, however, due to poor diet and inactivity inflammation can be negative when chronic and directed against your own body tissue. Excess inflammation can cause health problems such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and other hormone related issues, cinnamon helps to reduce inflammation when needs be.
• One of the biggest reasons to incorporate cinnamon into your diet is its effect on the hormone insulin. Cinnamon has been shown to significantly increase sensitivity to the hormone insulin. Insulin is one of the key hormones that regulate metabolism and energy use. It’s also essential for transporting blood sugar from your bloodstream to your cells. The problem is that many people are resistant to the effects of insulin due to poor dietary choices. Cinnamon can decrease this ‘insulin resistance’ so that insulin can play its role in the body properly.
• Apart from the beneficial effects on insulin resistance, cinnamon can lower blood sugar by several other mechanisms. First, cinnamon has been shown to decrease the amount of glucose that enters your bloodstream after a meal. It does this by interfering with numerous digestive enzymes, which slows the breakdown of carbohydrates in your digestive tract. Second, a compound in cinnamon can act on cells by mimicking insulin. This greatly improves glucose uptake by your cells, though it acts much slower than insulin itself.
• Due to it’s effect on metabolism and blood glucose levels, coupled with a balanced diet and training regime, cinnamon may be able to give you the edge in terms of muscle gain and fat loss!