Cassia VS Ceylon cinnamon

[surfsteve]

Till now I've been vaguely aware that there were more than one type of cinnamon. The vast majority of the time you buy cinnamon in the store you will be getting cassia cinnamon AKA fake cinnamon or common cinnamon; but true cinnamon is Ceylon cinnamon. Since these are two completely different plants I've decided to explore the health benefits of both.

Cassia cinnamon is better for regulating blood sugar and is a natural blood thinner but in large amounts can cause kidney or liver damage and is a known carcinogen. The reason for this is because it contains lots of coumarin while Ceylon cinnamon contains only trace amounts. Ceylon cinnamon also has a much milder flavor. 

Other than coumarin, Ceylon cinnamon contains as much or more of all of the health benefits of cassia cinnamon however it is a bit more expensive and harder to find.

Generally if it doesn't say Ceylon cinnamon on the label, assume you are buying cassia cinnamon.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/516598-the-health-benefits-between-ceylon-cinnamon-and-cassia/

[TylerDurden]

Don't put your trust in superfoods, even raw ones. It's a bogus myth. I would agree that some raw foods might be a little useful but none are, imo, essential to health.

[surfsteve]

Now that you know the main difference between Ceylon and cassia you will be better able to understand videos like this one when they merge the health benefits of both types of cinnamon.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG29xIk9KuY

[surfsteve]

Don't put your trust in superfoods, even raw ones. It's a bogus myth. I would agree that some raw foods might be a little useful but none are, imo, essential to health.

I don't think of herbs as superfoods but rather as medicines and tonics. If you want to live a normal healthy life in terms of paleo you don't need them however most of those guys were eaten by predators long before they were even close to my age.

[TylerDurden]

I don't think of herbs as superfoods but rather as medicines and tonics. If you want to live a normal healthy life in terms of paleo you don't need them however most of those guys were eaten by predators long before they were even close to my age.

That's a myth, actually. Infanticide etc. was so pervasive in Palaeo times, that themean average  life-expectancy was very low(c.30 years). But, if one survived infancy, one could easily live till 80+, just like with HG tribes later on.

[surfsteve]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHy5XXy9HGs

[surfsteve]

That's a myth, actually. Infanticide etc. was so pervasive in Palaeo times, that themean average  life-expectancy was very low(c.30 years). But, if one survived infancy, one could easily live till 80+, just like with HG tribes later on.

I have my doubts as to how people could easily live till 80 and beyond without herbs. The only way I see that happening is if they ate animals which themselves ate a wide variety of herbs but most grass fed animals only eat just that. Just grass. Grass is the ancestor of wheat so aside from eating the whole above ground plant, how much healthier can that actually be? Probably not up to par with a human or animal that eats a wide variety of vegetation. Gotta wonder why so many infants never survived infancy. Were they dying of disease or did they just have bad mothers with deformed wombs who left them alone to fend for themselves once they survived child birth? Herbs are paleo too. Even their primate ancestors ate them. I'm sure primitive man ate a lot of plant material when the hunting of animals became scarce and probably benefited greatly from herbs.

Cinnamon is number one on this list of five paleo super herbs that you should be eating, in the article below...
http://blog.paleohacks.com/paleo-super-herbs/#

[TylerDurden]

Palaeo peoples on the glaciers in the Ice-Age clearly had little access to raw wild herbs. And child mortality in palaeo times was mostly due to infanticide, not because of any unhealthy diets. Infanticide was necessary as mothers could not cope with more than 1 child at a time and had no birth-control other than breastfeeding. Anyway, the point is that skeletons of (healthy) old people in palaeo times  have often been found. This regular infanticide(and de facto mass eugenics) is one reason why humans evolved, without it we would all now  be just dumb apes.

[surfsteve]

Well yeah it makes sense that paleos that lived on glaciers didn't have access to herbs and spices but the rest of the world most certainly did.

[cobalamin]

I tried cinnamon to manage my mercury induced parkinsons and it worked initially but than decided to stop taking it... Had bad withdrawal symptoms. Cinnamon contains a compound which our liver converts into sodium benzoate (aka nicotine #2). Our bodies want vitamin B3; not sodium benzoate nor nicotine because they are vitamin B3 receptors and not nicotine receptors.

[surfsteve]

Hmm. Have to read more about that. What is this compound you are talking about? Would there be more of it in true Ceylon cinnamon or the common cassia cinnamon? I've been using cassia cinnamon till the bag of Ceylon cinnamon I ordered arrives. The thought occurred to me that I shouldn't be consuming to much of either type of cinnamon while the weather is so hot and that it would be better to consume more in the winter.

[surfsteve]

Still haven't found out what the chemical that converts into sodium benzoate is. The name sounded familiar and I read that sodium benzoate is indeed the stuff they use as a preservative only unlike cinnamon it's produced synthetically for that use. There are many articles suggesting that the sodium benzoate the body converts from cinnamon is supposed to be good for brain cognition. Unfortunately they don't differentiate between Ceylon and cassia cinnamon.

[surfsteve]

Here's one article that lists how much coumarin (about ten to twenty times) cassia has over Ceylon cinnamon. It also claims benzine is in cassia but only present in Ceylon in negligible amounts.

It claims Ceylon cinnamon is the one that is good for blood sugar and as we already know cassia cinnamon is the one that thins the blood.

This is one of the few articles that goes into the differences between the two types of cinnamon instead of lumping them both together. I wish I could find one about the benefits that did the same thing.
https://www.cinnamonvogue.com/cinnamon_side_effects.html

[surfsteve]

My Ceylon cinnamon came last evening. When I opened the bag it smelled like pure heaven. I don't think I'll ever want to use regular cinnamon again. I just went over to take a whiff of both of them to have a fresh comparison in my mind. Though the regular cinnamon taste is much much hotter the Ceylon cinnamon is at least ten times more fragrant and ten times better. Immediately upon opening the bag the smell reminded me of Coco Cola. Apparently Ceylon cinnamon is the difference between coke and pepsi. When I added it to a kidney smoothie along with holy basil it tasted awesome. I added some to a liver smoothie and it tasted more like Coca cola than liver!

I never cared for the taste of regular cinnamon but this stuff is wonderful. It's worth switching just for the taste alone. It's great to know that the health benefits are as impressive as the taste. I will be using a lot more of it and retiring my cassia cinnamon. I just hope I don't over do it because I like the taste so much.

I got a pretty good deal on it off Ebay when buying a whole pound and it was pretty good quality. It was well worth every penny.

[surfsteve]

Ceylon cinnamon has become one of my favorite spices. Before that I didn't even like cinnamon. My favorite way to take it is in a liver smoothie. Sometimes I can smell the Ceylon on my skin hours after I have taken it. I love that smell!

[cobalamin]

Nicotine and sodium benzoate are temporary Vitamin B3 stimulants from my experience of experiencing withdrawal symptoms when I stopped using Ceylon cinnamon and stopped being around second hand smoke. I felt like I needed a constant supply to gain the same energy boost I would gain from taking niacinamide or nicotinamide riboside just once per day. I don't take or need supplements anymore but I didn't experience withdrawal symptoms when I stopped taking those Vitamin B3 supplements.

I haven't seen any evidence indicating that they can be used in the Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) salvage pathway. The stimulants have been shown to rescue mitochondrial dysfunction but I have no idea if they can be processed into NAD and then recycled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotinamide_adenine_dinucleotide#Salvage_pathways