10 Hidden Health Benefits of Cinnamon

My top 10 reasons why you should be adding cinnamon into your diet, scientific reasons, health benefits of this bark made from the inner tree bark of the cinnamon tree. They pull it off, comes out like this to dry it up, and then they grind it, and then it's known as cinnamon. Maybe you're a cinnamon lover. I love it in my coffee. I'm going to show you some other remedies, but there's a lot of health benefits. I'm going to give you my top 10 right here, right now. Let's dive in. Two main types of cinnamon, Casea Salon, one of those two. Now, those are probably the ones you're seeing on the shelf at the store. Casea, a lot of benefits when it comes to thinning blood, might be beneficial for your blood pressure as well, but has coumadin in it, and so a known blood thinner, and you don't want to overdo that one, but could be very beneficial of using a food instead of a toxic medication like rat poison, which is warfarin, another very common blood thinner. The Salon, the one I have next to me, is the one we typically will use. We always try to get it organic. I put this in my coffee. We've used this in our smoothies, and I always try to find some ways to get some extra cinnamon in. Why? Well, there's a lot of benefits to it. Let's dive into those. So, taking this, grinding it up, that's how it is made. You can steep it. You can make some, you know, if it's full-time, you can make some delicious cider recipes out of it. Nurse Living Good has recipes for those, but I like to add it to the coffee, which, by the way, reminds me. Let me get a little bit in there. Now, let's dive into it. Number one, this is an antiviral, actually. Influenza virus, this helps to fight it. I love to take cinnamon if having a cough, if rundown, if congested, if sinus issues. Mix it with raw local honey. Those are going to have allergens from your areas that are going to give beneficial boost to your white blood cells. Put in some cinnamon, raw local honey, mix it in to a hot drink, like a tea. Excellent way to soothe the throat, prevent a cough, but antiviral properties shows research. So, that was the first one. Let's call that number 10, and let's count it down to number nine. The number nine best benefit of cinnamon is also antibacterial. This is going to be huge for teeth. If you have a lot of gum disease, mouth infections, cavities, cinnamon helps prevent the bacteria that grows in your mouth. So, it might help your breath a little bit as well, but once it gets down through the throat, it's very good for respiratory infections as well. Cinnamon oil is another way to use this. Very good, shows the research at preventing and or aiding respiratory infections because of its antibacterial properties. It actually kills certain types of bacteria like listeria and salmonella, and it goes after fungus as well. So, if you have candida overgrowth or thrush in your mouth, a good way to combat that is to get cinnamon. You might be able to get cinnamon-based toothpaste, even. That might be a decent option if it actually has real cinnamon in it to help out the mouth, throat, and the lungs. Now, moving on to number eight, the reason this has such a benefit, cinnamon, for the immune system is because of the main compound in it called cinnamaldehyde. Now, this is an antioxidant. We'll talk more about that in a moment, but that right there has the ability to shut down negative cells, we'll call them that, in your body. So, this is bacteria, fungus, viruses that we don't want in there, but it also goes after cancer cells. In fact, research shows it can stop or prevent the growth of ovarian cancer cells, and that cinnamaldehyde, it kind of sounds like something that could kill some things off, stops blood vessel formation and growth in tumor cells. So, that's why I like adding it very simply to something I'm drinking, a smoothie or a coffee on a daily basis. Let's go to number seven, neurodegenerative disorders. I'm talking Alzheimer's and losing memory, brain dysfunction. Cinnamon is fantastic. I get this question all the time. How do I help cognitive decline? How do I not end up like mom or grandma or grandpa? Cinnamon is one thing you can be adding on a daily basis. So, inside of my coffee, I always add in, on a daily basis, I have one cup of my Living It Daily coffee. You can get a link to that in the description, but the coconut oil, very good for the brain. Some cinnamon in there, very good for the brain. A little bit of butter, very good for the brain. And coffee, very good for the brain. So, it's like a brain bomb in the morning, but the cinnamaldehyde and the antioxidants found in cinnamon actually block the buildup of proteins in the brain. And a 2014 study showed that when it comes to Parkinson's, it actually helps protect the neurons in the brain, which helps your motor function inside of your body. Brain health, cinnamon added in. Number six, inflammation. Although it is beneficial in the body, it's your body attempting to repair itself. Think rolling your ankle, or if you got hit in the knee with a hammer, I don't know why you'd ever do that, but you would swell, right? And it's swelling, it's inflammation, it's good, but this chronic smoldering inflammation is affecting virtually every one of us. And something you can put in that has been shown through research to have a lot of anti-inflammatory activities in the body, you guessed it, cinnamon. So, if you need more blood thinning along with that, choose the casea type. If you just want the day-to-day, not as much blood thinning, very little blood thinning effect, but still a lot of the benefits, pick the Ceylon type. Make sure it's organic, so it doesn't have any heavy metals, or it isn't irradiated, which zaps some of these protective nutrients like anti-inflammatory. So, that rolls right into the polyphenols. There's a high amount of polyphenols inside of the cinnamon. This is what helps the anti-inflammatory process, mostly because those are potent antioxidants. Now, free radical damage inside of the body, whether it's from sun, or bad food, or a toxic chemical that you put on your skin or inside of your body, your body's got to figure out what to do with that free radical damage, and that can create a lot of issues, especially when it comes to your heart. So, inflammation builds up, the oxidation, the free radicals that are floating around in your system can create damage to the arteries and damage to your heart muscle. Your C-reactive protein, a video on that that I made is a more important number to measure than LDL cholesterol when it comes to your heart health. You should see that study. It's incredible. Check out that video. So, rolling right into number five, overall, cinnamon has a lot of medicinal benefits. Because of the cinnamaldehyde, the polyphenols that are involved with cinnamon help it to fight, from a medicinal perspective, especially when it comes to metabolism and it comes to your weight and your heart. So, let's continue on to number four. Cinnamon's a fat burner. Yes! This is one of the biggest benefits of it. It helps with blood sugar control. It helps to break down carbohydrates inside of your system, which is hopefully going to get you back into fat burning mode faster. Eating carbohydrates, you're probably not in fat burning mode. You might want to check out my rotational fasting teachings on that. So, it does this by slowing down the breakdown of the carbohydrates in the gut, and then there's not as much sugar uptake, so then you can get them out of your system. Studies, short-term blood sugar levels and longer-term A1C markers, which is huge for diabetics, shown that taking cinnamon actually helps to lower and control those numbers. So, blood sugar sufferers, diabetics, and those that are overweight, make sure you're putting cinnamon in to help control those. Number three, also aids insulin resistance. Now, this is what starts to put you into metabolic syndrome. And so, we have higher triglycerides. We have high blood sugar levels. You might be diagnosed with diabetes or blood pressure. Cinnamon has been shown in preliminary studies to help support the reversal stopping advancement of those exact conditions. Cinnamon. Number two, it helps protect against the number one disease killer in the world, heart disease. Just three quarters of a teaspoon. You're wondering how much? Actually helps to lower triglyceride levels, LDL levels, and helps support normal lipid levels inside of the body. Now, you might not be getting a full three quarters. It's still good. I maybe only use a quarter of a teaspoon each day. I'm not suffering with those issues. But if I was, I would be putting three quarters of it in a smoothie and make sort of a cinnamon-based smoothie each morning. That'd be an easy way to do it. Or you could just chew on a cinnamon stick. Also, number two, this was almost my number one, but just having cinnamon each day consistently over an eight-week period of time, research shows lowered blood pressure levels. So, if you're a high blood pressure sufferer, this is so easy. Why aren't doctors telling you this? Because they want to keep you on those darn drugs because that's who they get paid by. Whole separate topic. But it frustrates me that your doctor's not recommending cinnamon when your blood pressure's high, which leads me into number one, which is actually antioxidants. Cinnamon is an incredible antioxidant because it's full of polyphenols. Why does this matter to you? Because oxidation oxidizes cholesterol, clogs your heart, creates heart damage. Your C-reactive protein goes up and you are creating the perfect environment for heart disease. Cinnamon counteracts that, and it's so readily available and it's so cheap to be adding to your daily regimen. In fact, it's so powerful at this antioxidant process, you can literally use cinnamon as a food preservative. That's how much it protects. You want that protection inside of your body to stop oxidation, which is what's going to damage your blood vessels, let alone your brain and a lot of other conditions that we just talked about. So, especially with your heart. Now, what happens is and it starts to damage the heart muscle itself. You can measure this really easily with something called your CRP. That number shocked me of how valuable it is to understanding your heart health by just knowing that one value. You now know something that helps it in cinnamon. But I think you should learn more about CRP is more important than LDL, HDL, total cholesterol. Most numbers, when it comes to predicting if you're going to have a heart attack or a stroke, and I made a whole video about it with the research. That's next up right here. Enjoy your cup of cinnamon and go watch that one.