Blood Sugar Control
A quick overview of blood sugar (also called blood glucose; glucose is just a kind of sugar): when you eat a food containing carbohydrates, your body uses those carbs for fuel, especially for your muscles (that’s why athletes generally need more carbs than the rest of us). Insulin is the hormone that opens the door into the muscles, and lets the carbohydrates in. In a metabolically healthy person, this will result in a predictable pattern after a carbohydrate-rich meal: a temporary increase in blood sugar, and then a decrease as all that sugar leaves the blood and enters the muscles instead.
In diabetics on the other hand, blood sugar is chronically high, because diabetics either don’t produce enough insulin (Type 1) or their muscles aren’t getting the message from the insulin signaling (Type 2). Chronically high blood sugar is bad news: it sets off a vicious cycle of inflammatory reactions, and often ends up being stored as fat (the reason why diabetes and obesity are closely related).
First up to bat is cinnamon. It’s a delicious coincidence that cinnamon goes so perfectly with sweet potatoes, because from a health perspective, it’s the perfect accompaniment to everyone’s favorite safe starch.
In one study, 3 grams (just under 2 teaspoons) of cinnamon every day for eight weeks improved blood sugar control, lipid profile, and BMI in diabetic patients. Another study found important benefits for doses as low as 1 gram (less than a single teaspoon) daily.
Even healthy people can benefit from this. One study fed patients rice pudding, and found that pudding flavored with 3g cinnamon helped control the insulin response to the carbohydrate-rich meal (in other words, it helped them metabolize the carbohydrates better).
Blood Lipid Improvements
Blood lipids (triglycerides and cholesterol) are a topic of hot debate. There’s no real evidence to prove that dietary cholesterol raises blood cholesterol, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that blood cholesterol itself is harmless; it just proves that egg yolks are innocent of raising it. So even if you’re happily and healthily chowing down on butter, liver, and other extremely nutritious cholesterol-rich foods without a trace of guilt, blood lipid profiles are still something to keep an eye on.
A quick review of the acronyms:
- LDL Cholesterol: This is the “bad cholesterol” that most doctors agree you should reduce (although even this is much more complicated than it sounds).
- HDL Cholesterol: This is the “good cholesterol” that most doctors are fine with.
- Triglycerides: these are another kind of blood lipid associated with cardiovascular disease – interestingly enough, the best way to raise triglyceride levels is not eating fat, but rather eating a lot of refined carbohydrates!
Many of the same spices that help improve blood glucose control also help improve blood lipids (probably because insulin and blood sugar are very closely related to cardiovascular health). Several of the cinnamon studies, for example, noted that not only did cinnamon improve subjects’ blood sugar levels, but it also lowered their LDL cholesterol, and increased or did not change their HDL cholesterol. This means the subjects had an improved ratio of LDL to HDL, a pattern associated with a lower risk of heart disease.
Improve Blood Pressure
Hypertension (high blood pressure) doesn’t actually result from eating too much salt, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue to be aware of. Despite how little we actually know about the causes of hypertension, it’s probably a safe bet to aim for a normal blood pressure. Amazingly enough, cinnamon comes to the rescue again here: after 2 grams of cinnamon per day for 12 weeks, a group of Type 2 diabetics showed lower blood pressure compared to controls.
Food Preservation
Spices don’t just act as antioxidants within the human body; they also help to prevent the nutritional degradation of food during storage. In one study, for example, annatto and coriander were extremely effective at preserving the valuable Omega-3 fatty acids in meatballs during storage. Although Omega-3s are very good for you, they are still a type of PUFA and accordingly they’re quite fragile and prone to oxidation and going rancid. The spices in this study helped to prevent that, keeping the fats intact and healthy rather than oxidized and inflammatory.
Preventing the oxidation of these fragile fats helps avoid the creation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), which create oxidative stress and speed up the aging process. The best illustration of this is a recent test where researchers gave men with Type 2 Diabetes one of two types of burger patties. The first patty was seasoned with salt only. The second had salt and a spice mix containing cloves, cinnamon, oregano, rosemary, ginger, black pepper, paprika, and garlic powder.
Compared to the control group, the group eating the spiced patties had fewer markers of oxidative stress: the antioxidants in the spices protected the fats in the hamburger both during cooking and during digestion. The spiced burgers also helped improve the function of the endothelium, the cell layer that lines the inner surface of blood vessels. Impaired endothelial function is one major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, so this represents a significant cardiovascular benefit.
Reduce DOMS
Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness (abbreviated DOMS) is familiar to any athlete who’s ever pushed it a little too hard in the gym and woken up the next day barely able to move. But did you know that your post-workout meal could save you some of that pain? In this study on female martial artists, one group of researchers found that 3 grams (slightly less than 2 teaspoons) of ginger effectively reduced muscle soreness.
Improve Gut Flora Function
As it turns out, our gut flora love spices just as much as we do, and they seem to be particularly fond of turmeric. A spice instantly recognizable for its bright golden-yellow color, turmeric is most frequently used in Indian and Southeast Asian cuisine.
In this study, subjects ate curry either with or without turmeric. After their meal, researchers tested the subjects’ breath to see how much hydrogen was in it. The turmeric group had more hydrogen in their breath, and the carbohydrates in the meal seemed to be moving through their small bowel faster. These are both signs of a healthy response from the gut flora.
Another study, which gave subjects 72-144mg/day (less than 1 teaspoon) of turmeric for 8 weeks reported that digestive symptoms were significantly improved in the intervention group compared to a placebo group. Interestingly enough, this study measured IBS symptoms, but in people without diagnosed cases of IBS, suggesting that turmeric is beneficial even for people without serious pre-existing problems.
Prevent and Treat Nausea
It’s sometimes surprising how often traditional folk remedies actually turn out to be useful when we start studying them in a lab. Ginger has traditionally been prescribed to pregnant women as an antiemetic (an anti-nausea drug) to help treat morning sickness. And now we can tell from studies that it actually works. As well as being less expensive than prescription drugs, this also has safety benefits: unlike harsh pharmaceuticals (most famously thalidomide), ginger does not carry any risk of birth defects.
With the equipment in modern labs, we can now confirm that this old wives’ prescription is quite effective. After several smaller studies, a 2005 meta-analysis showed that 1-1.5 grams of ginger every day (about 1 teaspoon) was not only effective for nausea in pregnancy, but also free from potentially dangerous side effects. There haven’t been any studies specifically on ginger for other types of nausea, but if you always get bad motion sickness on planes or in cars, a cup of ginger tea is definitely worth a shot!