Today in the office,  someone came out of left field and asked me what I thought about the use of cinnamon for the control of their hypertension.  Keeping a somewhat straight face, I said I would look into it, but hadn't heard much about it.

I try to keep an open mind about new things I hear from patients.  I think some of us get defensive when confronted with a new, unknown idea.  It is a little anxiety-provoking, but I look at it as an opportunity to learn something new, and I have been taught something by almost every one of my patients.

Looking it up tonight, I see there is almost nothing about hypertension and cinnamon, but there are some papers looking at cinnamon extracts to control blood sugars.

I even found this 2009 paper, a prospective randomized clinical trial that showed a nice benefit to HbA1c with a cinnamon supplement, in addition to standard care.  Granted, I never heard of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (really), but there is a nice table in the article reviewing clinical trials of this spice treatment (earlier results were mixed).

I know what you're thinking--surely this is an early April fools' joke, but it looks like there is some interesting research going on out there, and that this cinnamon-diabetes concept might be the real deal.

You really can't fault the science.  Though there may always be some sleight of hand in these studies, this seems to be a straight-up randomized trial.  The only problem with it is that it was a small study, 109 patients.  As such, if you reject it merely because it doesn't confirm your prior beliefs, then what level of evidence are you, as a scientist, willing to accept?  So kudos, Paul Crawford; let's see what you have in store for us in 2010!