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5 Proven Health Benefits of Cinnamon for High Blood Pressure
5 Proven Health Benefits of Cinnamon for High Blood Pressure
Included as one of the most common health problems, high blood pressure or hypertension is a condition when the blood pressure flowing in the body becomes higher or above normal blood pressure. This condition cannot be underestimated, because it can lead to various dangerous complications. What are they?
Note that normal blood pressure is around 100-140 mmHg for systolic, and 60-90 mmHg for diastolic. So, a person will be diagnosed with high blood pressure if the test results show a number above 140/90. It needs to be treated carefully by using natural materials.
Because if not, other serious problems would likely to happen. High blood pressure is a serious condition, especially if it is not controlled. One of the bad effects, which is also deadly, of high blood pressure is a heart attack.
High blood pressure in the blood vessels will cause heart problems, which can lead to a heart attack. Many would like to avoid this, since it’s considered pretty dangerous for almost everybody.
You probably have often met people who have had strokes due to high blood pressure, right? Yes, uncontrolled hypertension is indeed one of the main risk factors for stroke.
Therefore, if you are diagnosed with hypertension, you should maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle, so that blood pressure can be controlled and the risk of stroke can be avoided.
The sense of sight is one of the important things that support our daily lives. Just a little decreased function, the impact can be pretty big. Well, did you know that this decrease in vision function can also occur due to high blood pressure? This condition is called hypertensive retinopathy, which is damage to the small blood vessels in the eye due to high blood pressure.
As said above, medication is always needed in order to maintain your blood pressure, and cinnamon is also believed to be an effective cure.
Cinnamon is known as a type of spice that can be used in cooking or cakes. But apart from that, it turns out that cinnamon is also known to reduce blood pressure in diabetes patients.
Cinnamon combined with magnesium, a healthy diet, and lifestyle changes can lower and control blood pressure in hypertensive and diabetic patients.
Although not combined with magnesium supplements, cinnamon is still effective for lowering blood pressure. Cinnamon has long been used in medicine to treat dizziness during menstruation or even diabetes.
It’s also one of the plants that contain the highest antioxidants which can provide many health benefits, not only for diabetes or hypertension patients, but for all of them.
So in order to catch a glimpse of what it can be used for, here’s the list of cinnamon benefits :
1. Lowering Blood Pressure
For culinary lovers, you must be familiar with cinnamon. Indeed, cinnamon is widely used as a food and beverage ingredient. Cinnamon has a distinctive aroma and taste, this makes food and drinks more delicious.
Another fact, cinnamon is widely used in the world of herbal medicine. It contains essential oils of eugenol, safrole, cinnamaldehyde, tannins, flavonoids, calcium, oxalate, and resin.
As information, the flavonoid content in cinnamon has many benefits, one of which is to reduce high blood pressure. However, people with high blood pressure are not advised to consume cinnamon carelessly, since a very high consumption in cinnamon it’s not advisable as well.
2. Blessed with Antioxidants
Apart from cinnamaldehyde, cinnamon also has other beneficial properties such as antioxidant substances which are quite high.
This substance can provide many benefits to the body, for example reducing damage in the body due to free radicals, preventing premature aging, preventing oxidative stress, and being able to control the formation of nitric oxide which can cause brain disorders, cancer, and other serious diseases.
Some of the antioxidants found in cinnamon, namely polyphenols, phenolic acids, and flavonoids, are useful for fighting against other health problems.
3. Good for Diet
For those of you who are on a diet, consume cinnamon often. This is because according to research from the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute, cinnamon contains cinnamaldehyde which is useful to help burn fat that has accumulated in the body. Besides that, cinnamon can also reduce your appetite.
So, so that you can lose weight quickly, drink cinnamon boiled water mixed with honey regularly. That way, you can immediately feel the benefits of cinnamon for your diet. You may also try other variants, like yogurt and cinnamon.
4. Preventing Diabetes
The efficacy of cinnamon, which is also well known to many people, is that it can lower blood sugar. Cinnamon can lower blood sugar in several ways, first and most importantly is by reducing the amount of glucose that enters the bloodstream after you eat.
What it does is to disrupt a number of digestive enzymes, so that carbohydrates are broken down more slowly in the digestive tract. Second, the compounds in cinnamon can also act on cells by mimicking insulin. This can increase the absorption of glucose by the body’s cells, although not as fast as insulin itself.
A number of studies that have been conducted in humans have also confirmed the anti-diabetic effect of cinnamon, by showing the results that blood sugar levels can decrease by 10-29 percent by consuming cinnamon regularly.
5. Highly Supporting Heart’s Health
The benefits of cinnamon for heart health have also been proven. This spice can reduce total cholesterol, bad LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides, while the good HDL cholesterol level remains stable. In fact, a recent review study revealed that cinnamon can also increase HDL cholesterol levels.
By consuming cinnamon regularly, you can avoid various kinds of heart problems, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high triglyceride levels.