Cinnamon - Recipes to Fight Diabetes & Heart Disease

Cinnamon – More Than Just A Spice
The ingredient that may help with heart disease and diabetes

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, a touch of cinnamon may help, as well, recent research sugggests...

Holiday dinners are chock full of delicious dishes from recipes handed down from generations past. As you sit down to enjoy your meal this year, think of this. A sweet slice of apple pie, a decadent cup of hot chocolate, a warm piece of cinnamon raisin bread all have at least one thing in common. If you guessed cinnamon, you are right!

Cinnamon comes from a small South East Asian evergreen tree. Some of its other names are Cassia, Sweet Wood, and Gui Zhi. It has a pleasant smell and stimulates the senses while it calms the nerves. Cinnamon has been used for ages for many different reasons besides spicing up recipes.

Throughout history, cinnamon is used as an air freshener fragrance or to add wonderful flavor to a recipe. It is a common incense fragrance. Some other uses that might not have occurred to you are the medicinal kind, such as preventing and curing fungal infections- like athlete's foot. Have a few pesky moths that aren't taking a hint? Replace your moth balls with some cinnamon sticks wrapped in a knee high stocking (or any other breathable, porous material.) Who knew moths didn't like cinnamon? Instead of pinching your cheeks for that rosy complexion, add some extra cinnamon to your diet.

In ancient Egypt, however, it was used for embalming or as a food preservative. Traditional Chinese medicine used cinnamon for relieving ailments such as diarrhea and chills, influenza or even parasitic worms. Recently, studies have shown that cinnamon can reduce the blood sugar levels for diabetics and also lower cholesterol levels. Some herbal pharmacies make available cinnamon in pill form to fight diabetes and heart disease.

So this holiday season have an extra slice of apple pie or cinnamon pecan pie. If your doctor asks about the extra pounds...now you can say you were working on your cholesterol!