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This One Spice Helps To Fight Obesity Effectively, Try It Out!

Know how this one spice helps to fight obesity here in this article.

By Staff

Obesity is one of the rising health concern across the world. Sedentary lifestyle and lack of exercise are among the two major causes for obesity.

In o order to get rid of the problem, people, specifically women take up extreme steps like skipping their major meals and they go to the extent of starving as well.

Well, for those of you who are obese, here is some good news. A new study has found that cinnamon, one of the most common spice helps in fighting obesity by burning fat cells and improving metabolism.

Meanwhile, scientists had previously observed that cinnamaldehyde, an essential oil that gives cinnamon its flavour, appeared to protect mice against obesity and hyperglycemia or abnormally high blood glucose level.

health benefits of cinnamon

However, the mechanisms underlying the effect were not well understood. Researchers at the University of Michigan in the US wanted to better understand cinnamaldehyde's action and determine whether it might be protective in humans too.

"Scientists were finding that this compound affected metabolism. So we wanted to figure out how - what pathway might be involved, what it looked like in mice and what it looked like in human cells," said Jun Wu, research assistant professor at Michigan.

How Cinnamon Helps Fight Obesity?

As per the study it was found that cinnamaldehyde improves metabolic health by acting directly on fat cells, or adipocytes, inducing them to start burning energy through a process called thermogenesis.

Wu and her colleagues tested human adipocytes from volunteers representing a range of ages, ethnicities and body mass indices. When the cells were treated with cinnamaldehyde, the researchers noticed increased expression of several genes and enzymes that enhance lipid metabolism.

They also observed an increase in Ucp1 and Fgf21, which are important metabolic regulatory proteins involved in thermogenesis. Adipocytes normally store energy in the form of lipids.

This long-term storage was beneficial to our distant ancestors, who had much less access to high-fat foods and thus a much greater need to store fat. That fat could then be used by the body in times of scarcity or in cold temperatures, which induce adipocytes to convert stored energy into heat.

health benefits of cinnamon

With the rising obesity epidemic, researchers have been looking for ways to prompt fat cells to activate thermogenesis, turning those fat-burning processes back on. Wu believes that cinnamaldehyde may offer one such activation method.

Since it is already used widely in the food industry, it might be easier to convince patients to stick to a cinnamon- based treatment than to a traditional drug regimen. "Cinnamon has been part of our diets for thousands of years, and people generally enjoy it," Wu said.

"So if it can help protect against obesity, too, it may offer an approach to metabolic health that is easier for patients to adhere to," said Wu.

The findings of the study was recently published in the journal Metabolism.

Other Benefits Of Cinnamon:

It isn't just obesity, but cinnamon have plenty of other health benefits. Cinnamon helps better digestion, improves blood circulation, prevents heart disease and due to its antimicrobial properties cinnamon also helps fight respiratory infection.

(With Agency Inputs)

Story first published: Thursday, November 23, 2017, 12:52 [IST]
Read more about: obesity cinnamon