According to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, adding cinnamon to your diet can cool your stomach by up to two degrees.
Cinnamon. Image credit: Bertrand Thiry / CC BY-SA 3.0.
“The results of the study, which used pigs, seemed to show that cinnamon maintained the integrity of the stomach wall,” said study co-lead author Prof. Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
“When pigs feed at room temperature, carbon dioxide gas increases in their stomach.”
“Cinnamon in their food reduces this gas by decreasing the secretion of gastric acid and pepsin from the stomach walls, which in turn cools the pigs’ stomachs during digestion,” he said.
According to the authors, when the pigs are hot, they hyperventilate, which reduces carbon dioxide production.
With cinnamon treatment, carbon dioxide decreases even further. This not only cools the pigs but leads to a significant improvement in their overall health.
“Altogether cinnamon cooled the stomach by up to 2 degrees Celsius,” added study lead author Dr. Jian Zhen Ou, also from RMIT University.
“No wonder cinnamon is so popular in warm regions as taking it makes people feel better and gives them a feeling of cooling down.”
Schematic of a gastric gas profiler (a modified version of gas sensor capsule with higher density): whole capsule (left) and cross sectional view (right). Image credit: Jian Zhen Ou et al, doi: 10.1038/srep33387.
This work is part of a bigger study into gut health using swallowable gas sensor capsules or smart pills.
“We have successfully developed a non-invasive and direct gas profiling tool called gas sensor capsule,” Prof. Kalantar-zadeh and co-authors explained.
“The capsule is swallowable but indigestible, which has enabled real-time and precise gas measurements in different sections of the gastrointestinal tract in animal models.”
“The emergence of such a novel tool can therefore potentially provide a new approach in vivo for the investigation of gut under various disease and disorder conditions.”
“The gas capsule can also be a unique tool in assessing therapeutics and their impacts on the gut. However, such capabilities have not been shown yet.”
“Our experiments with pigs and cinnamon show how swallowable gas sensor capsules can help provide new physiological information that will improve our understanding of diet or medicine,” Prof. Kalantar-zadeh added.
“They are a highly reliable device for monitoring and diagnosing gastrointestinal disorders.”
“They will revolutionize food science as we know it,” he said.
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Jian Zhen Ou et al. 2016. Potential of in vivo real-time gastric gas profiling: a pilot evaluation of heat-stress and modulating dietary cinnamon effect in an animal model. Scientific Reports 6: 33387; doi: 10.1038/srep33387
