Ceylon Cinnamon as Metformin Alternative? Combined Rodent + Human Study Yields Promising Results, But Do You Actually Need Another Expensive Carb Blocker?

What you need is original Ceylon Cinnamon, not the cheap Cassia Cinnamon, which is often loaded with potentially toxic coumarin.

The mechanism by which cinnamon and metformin work may be completely different, the net outcome, on the other hand, is very similar: Both reduce the blood sugar excursions in insulin resistant individuals.

In contrast to metformin, of which I can only repeat that it is pointless to use it (unless you want the AMPK overexpression to leave you hypoglycemic and hungry all day), if you are lean and healthy, cinnamon may yet also offer benefits to normal-weight, normo-glycemic individuals like the 18 subjects (11 men, 7 women) in a recent study from Dialpha SAS in France (Beejmohun. 2014).

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The combined rodent + human study, Beejmohun et al. conducted is, to the knowledge of its authors, the first study to check the acute effect of cinnamon extracts (specifically a hydro-alcoholic Ceylon
cinnamon extract) in a randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over clinical trial in healthy subjects.

Figure 1: Alpha-amylase inhibitory effect of CCE.Values represent mean of triplicate measures (Beejmohun. 2014).

The first thing the scientists did was to assess the in vitro inhibition of the pancreatic α-amylase enzyme activity, or, as the bros would say: Its carb-blocker quality (if you block α-amylase, you block the breakdown of complex carbohydrates).

As you can see in Figure 1 the "carb blocker" activity of the Ceylon Cinnamon extract was similar to that of acarbose, an anti-diabetic drug used to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus and, in some countries, prediabetes (in the US it's sold by Bayer as Precose in Europe and China as Glucobay). As you probably already guessed, acarbose was specifically designed to inhibit enzymes (glycoside hydrolases) needed to digest carbohydrates - enzymes like the alpha-amylase enzyme.

The Type of Cyelon Cinnamon Extract Matters: The scientists compared the effects of their hydro-alcoholic to regular aqueous cinnamon extracts and found the hydro-alcoholic to be 8% more potent. Keep that and the fact that plain cinnamon from the supermarket will in 99% not be Ceylon cinnamon in mind, when you shop for natural blood glucose managers. Eventually, the cheaper Cassia Cinnamon is probably not just going to work less effectively, it may also push you across the maximal tolerable intake level for coumarin (0.1 mg/day/kg of body weight; 7 mg/day for a person of 70 kg), of which the Ceylon Cinnamon extract (CEE) in the study at hand containes less than 0.2 mg per serving and thus only 2.8% of the tolerable intake level.

It is thus not very surprising that the rodent study revealed that he quick and significant rise in glycemia (73.5 ± 2.8 mg/dL above the pre-STT value (T0)) that occurred 30 min after the starch load with 1.5 g/kg of body weight of starch in rats after an overnight fast was reduced by 20.4%, when the rodents received an additional 50 mg/kg (650mg for a human being) of the Ceylon Cinnammon extract with their starch load.

Figure 2: There is a logarithmic dose response effect w/ increasing dosages of CEE (Beejmohun. 2014).

As Beejmohun et al. point out, the beneficial "effect is particularly significant during the peak of glycemia at 30 min (Student’s t-test P < 0.001)." (Beejmohun. 2014). And as the data in Figure 2 shows, it increased logarithmically with increasing dosages (this means more is only a little better and more than 150mg/kg or ~1.8g for a human being are probably useless due to the ceiling effect).

We are interested in human studies, right?

So, let's leave the rodent data an take a look at the blood sugar levels of the 18 human subjects, who consumed 1g of the extract before a standardized meal.

Figure 3: Effect of 1 g CCE on blood glucose and insulin response after a standard meal in humans (Beejmohun. 2014).

I assume I don't have to explain the data in Figure 3. What we see is the expected reduction in blood sugar response of which previous studies suggest that it is mostly produced by a reduction in glucose uptake from the digestive tract (Hlebowicz. 2007) and further promoted - at least in insulin resistant individuals (Kim. 2006) - by minor increases in cellular glucose uptake.

One thing that we may want to keep in mind, though, is the fact that the ameliorative effect on the blood sugar response was more pronounced in the first 60 minutes after the meal (-21.2% vs. -14.8% area under the curve). An observation that should remind you of the fact that the temporary inhibition of alpha-amylase and thus the slower digestion of carbohydrates may influence the glycemia, but not (necessarily) the total energy, let alone the total amount of sugar your tummy is going to squeeze out of the digesta in the hours after your meal.

There are dozens of supplements which can help you to improve your insulin sensitivity. Many have more promising mechanisms of action than the overhyped carbohydrate blocker cinnamon | more.

Bottom line: I am still 100% not excited about the use of Cinnamon in healthy individuals. For someone with blood sugar issues, on the other hand, it may be worth to postpone the influx of sugar into the system by using 1g of a hydro-alcoholic Ceylon Cinnamon extract.

But let's be honest: Wouldn't it be better to change your diet? People who use carb or fat blockers always remind me of that idiot who wears a helmet, when crashing his head against a wall infinitely - So, why don't you simply stop eating tons of pasta and rearrange the macro composition of your meals from high to moderate carb, if you don't work out and can't afford eating carbs | Comment on Facebook.

References:

• Beejmohun, Vickram, et al. "Acute effect of Ceylon cinnamon extract on postprandial glycemia: alpha-amylase inhibition, starch tolerance test in rats, and randomized crossover clinical trial in healthy volunteers." BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 14.1 (2014): 351.
• Hlebowicz, Joanna, et al. "Effect of cinnamon on postprandial blood glucose, gastric emptying, and satiety in healthy subjects." The American journal of clinical nutrition 85.6 (2007): 1552-1556.
• Kim, W., et al. "Naphthalenemethyl ester derivative of dihydroxyhydrocinnamic acid, a component of cin-namon, increases glucose disposal by enhancing translocation of glucose transporter 4." Diabetologia 49.10 (2006): 2437-2448.

Will Drinking Tea Solve Our Sugary Problems? Commercial Tea Preparations Contain Effective "Carb Blocker"

Tea: An anti-oxidant carb-blocker with class - The Britons do it right - the always have a cup of tea with their scones.

As a (hopefully) regular SuppVersity reader you will know that I don't buy into either the fructose or the sucrose theory of everything (diabetes, cancer, obesity, stupidity, etc.). This does not mean that I wouldn't understand that the average Westerner would largely benefit from a reduction in carbohydrate intake. A reduction that - and this is what a recent paper in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Preventive Medicine can tell us could be achieved by something as simple as drinking more tea (Oboh. 2014).

Commercial teas turn out to be carb-blockers

In said paper Ganiyu Oboh and his colleagues from the Federal University of Technology and the Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria report that:

"The antidiabetic property of the teas could be attributed to their inhibitory effect on carbohydrate hydrolyzing enzymes implicated in diabetes and their antioxidant activities." (Oboh. 2014)

And despite the fact that this still is a hypothesis, the results of their  would provide us with another mechanism to explain the previously reported beneficial effects of regular consumption of tea (in general!) on type II diabetes risk.

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The fact that the researches didn't just use any extracts, but bought their samples, 4 different commercial samples of bagged tea leaves of three brands, i.e.

• one green tea (GT), 
• two black teas (BT1 and BT2), and
• one formulated herbal preparation for diabetes (ADT) 

right from regular supermarkets in Akure metropolis, makes the results only more relevant. Ok, one of the teas certainly sticks out, the "anti-diabetes tea" (ADT) was composed of white tea (63.4%), Radix puerariae (8%), Radix ophiopogonis(6.2%), hawthorn berry (10%), Chinese yam (6.2%), and fragrant Solomon seal rhizome (6.2%) and certainly sounds as if someone had opened the caps of one of the myriad currently available "insulin sensitizers" or "fat burners" into one of those tiny teabags - unfair? We'll see.

More than just antioxidants!?

If you take a closer look at the ADT formula (no, that's not "ATD" the anti-aromatase inhibitor with anti-libido and anti-androgen side effects | learn more), even a "non-noob" who has long lost all faith in the grandiose promises of the supplement industry would say: "Hey that could work!" Why? Well...

• 

  Figure 1: 2,2-Azizobis (3-ethylbenzo- thiazoline∼6-sulfonate; ABTS) scaven- ging ability and ferric reducing property of the teas (Oboh. 2014)

  White tea has already been shown to reduce most of the diabetes associated abnormalities in a steptozotocin-induced diabetes model of rats (Islam. 2011).
• Radix puerariae which is also known as "Kudzu root" contains puearin, which is a scientifically proven antioxidant that helps with diabetes and cariovascular disease (Wong. 2011).
• Radix ophiopogonis is another anti-oxidant TCM staple with proven anti-diabetic effects (Chan. 2008)
• Hawthorn, Chinese Yam and Solomon seal rhizome are likewise potent antioxidants, although direct anti-diabetic effects are not well-established they may help sooth the symptoms / consequences of high blood sugar (specifically heart disease; Walker. 2006; Chang. 2004; Khan. 2010)

And still, the antioxidant properties, of this mixture fall short of those of green tea and the black tea preparation #1 (see Figure 1).

In the end, antioxidants were yet not what the researchers were really interested to begin with. What Oboh et al. wanted to know was whether or not there may be another way by the means of which teas exert their epidemiologically established effects.

Figure 2: Inhibition of 𝛼-amylase (left) and 𝛼-glucosidase (right) by aequeous extracts from some commercially available teas (Oboh. 2014). GT: Green tea; BT: Black tea; ADT: antidiabetes tea.

Their ability to inhibit the action of the carbohydrate digesting enzymes α-amylase and α-glucosidase, the enzymes which catalyse the hydrolysis of starch into disaccharides and trisaccharides and break down the latter into glucose, was of much greater interest to the scientists.

Maybe the effects would be even more pronounced if it wasn't for the "Potentially Hazardous Amounts of Lead, Aluminum, Arsenic & Co in Commercial Tea Preparations" | more

So is "carb-blocking" really how tea works its anti-diabetic magic? It's difficult to tell to which degree their ability to inhibit carbohydrate digestion actually contributes to the anti-diabetic effects of tea. With a 40% and 80-90% inhibition at concentrations of only 50mg/ml, it is yet at least likely that the inhibition of two major steps in the digestion of starches (α-amylase) and di- and trisaccharides (α-glucosidase) contributes to the -16% reduction in diabetes risk of people who consume "aqueous extracts of tea" (=a regular tea infusion) on a regular basis Huxley et al. report in their pertinent 2009 meta-analysis in the Archives of Internal Medicine (Huxley. 2009).

Reference:

• Chan, Judy Yuet‐Wa, et al. "Protective effects of an herbal formulation of Radix Astragali, Radix Codonopsis and Cortex Lycii on streptozotocin‐induced apoptosis in pancreatic β‐cells: an implication for its treatment of diabetes mellitus." Phytotherapy Research 22.2 (2008): 190-196.
• Chang, Sue-Joan, et al. "Chinese yam (Dioscorea alata cv. Tainung No. 2) feeding exhibited antioxidative effects in hyperhomocysteinemia rats." Journal of agricultural and food chemistry 52.6 (2004): 1720-1725.
• Oboh, Ganiyu, et al. "Interaction of Some Commercial Teas with Some Carbohydrate Metabolizing Enzymes Linked with Type-2 Diabetes: A Dietary Intervention in the Prevention of Type-2 Diabetes." Advances in Preventive Medicine 2014 (2014).
• Huxley, Rachel, et al. "Coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and tea consumption in relation to incident type 2 diabetes mellitus: a systematic review with meta-analysis." Archives of Internal Medicine 169.22 (2009): 2053.
• Islam, Md. "Effects of the aqueous extract of white tea (Camellia sinensis) in a streptozotocin-induced diabetes model of rats." Phytomedicine 19.1 (2011): 25-31.
• Khan, Haroon, et al. "The antinociceptive activity of Polygonatum verticillatum rhizomes in pain models." Journal of ethnopharmacology 127.2 (2010): 521-527.
• Walker, Ann F., et al. "Hypotensive effects of hawthorn for patients with diabetes taking prescription drugs: a randomised controlled trial." The British Journal of General Practice 56.527 (2006): 437.