Cinnamon or dalchini forms an integral part of Indian condiments as it adds a distinct flavour to various dishes. However, it is not just a part of the culinary world, but it also consists of immense medicinal properties, one of the most prominent one being its ability to control diabetes.

Here’s what you need to know:

What is diabetes?
Health benefits of cinnamon
Include cinnamon in your diet

What is diabetes?

Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when the pancreas is no longer able to make insulin, or when the body cannot make good use of the insulin it produces. Insulin is a hormone that enables glucose to flow from the bloodstream into the cell to produce energy. This leads to an increase in your blood glucose or blood sugar level. Through our health tool available online, you can now calculate your blood sugar level.

Health benefits of cinnamon

Let us take a look at the health benefits of cinnamon

The importance of cinnamon lies in its ability to stimulate cells for glucose consumption. It promotes the release of insulin from the pancreas and boosts insulin sensitivity that helps in the processing of glucose.
Cinnamon benefits and improves the digestive system. A healthy digestive tract will process and digest sugar and flush out excess sugar, thus, keeping the blood sugar level in control.
Your blood sugar level can often spike after meals. This fluctuation can lead to inflammation. However, cinnamon regulates blood sugar with its antioxidant property, further reducing oxidative stress in the body, and in turn, lowering damage to cells.
3-6 grams of cinnamon daily is considered adequate for controlling diabetes. It reduces serum glucose, triglyceride, LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol in people with type 2 diabetes.

Among its other health benefits, cinnamon relieves pain in individuals suffering from arthritis, boosts the body’s immune system, helps in relieving indigestion, has an anti-clotting effect on blood, reduces the proliferation of leukemia, and lymphoma cancer cells, and also reduces risk factors for heart diseases.

Include cinnamon in your diet

You can also effectively include cinnamon in your regular diet to control diabetes. Take a look at best foods for diabetes control:

Cinnamon for diabetes has a mild sweet flavour and can easily replace sugar to be used as a natural sweetener in desserts like cakes and pies and Indian sweets such as halwa, kheer and barfi.
To keep diabetes in check, soak a 2-inch piece or bark of cinnamon in a glass of water overnight, and drink it in the morning on an empty stomach.
You can add a pinch of cinnamon powder in your simmering masala tea or coffee and enjoy its various health benefiting properties.
Sprinkle a dash of cinnamon powder to your oatmeal, bowl of cereal or fruits instead of adding honey or sugar.
Add a small cinnamon stick to Indian curries along with cardamom, bay leaves, cloves and pepper.
You can also have it as delicious cinnamon buns, quite famous as a breakfast delicacy.

Cinnamon can also be easily included in a diabetic’s diet. You can get a day 1 cover for diabetes with Activ Health – Platinum-Enhanced Plan. So, what are you waiting for? #ABHIKaro. Aditya Birla Health Insurance karo. Follow blogs on nutrition and fitness for Activ Living in Summer on the Activ Living Blog.