cinnamon and trouble now?

Annabella58

cinnamon and trouble now?

Annabella58

Hi, someone had a thread on here about use of cinnamon being a no no...I just literally dump it into my coffee...since my onc nixxed all fish oil supplements, I figured it might help lower bad cholesterol.

Now I read that Memorial Sloan K has a study touting cinnamon as a bad thing.  Does anyone know whether this is in regard to supplements or table cinnamon?  Did they give amounts?

thanks

crazy4carrots

Annie -- check out Mem. Sloan Kettering's website:  www.mskcc.org  It has lots of info on botanicals, and studies that have been done on their effectiveness. 

Cinnamon, according to mskcc, has been shown to exhibit some estrogenic activity "in vitro" (which basically means, in a petri dish in the lab).  Studies are ongoing as to its effectiveness in lowering cholesterol.  It's been claimed that cinnamon can help mitigate the spike in blood sugar levels caused by eating fruit etc. so I always put a dash in my fruit smoothies.  It's really my favourite spice flavour so, like you, I hope the "in vitro" studies don't translate eventually into "in vivo" results!

rreynolds1

What's up with the fish oil.  I take it every day.  Seems like whenever I start taking something that should be good for me, I find out it's bad.  Grrrrr.

Roseann

Rich66

Who's saying fish oil is bad?

Merilee

You just have to make sure your fish oil does not contain mercury. Any Fish oil that is worth taking will say that it is mercury free on the label.

EstherMSKCC

Dear anniealso,

I'm an employee of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and after seeing your post, I thought I would send you the link to the "About Herbs" section of our website that lindasa mentioned in her reply: http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/79/topic/redir.aspx?C=a41b865196644ca1a70fc680eaa9a727&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.mskcc.org%2faboutherbs. This resource provides evidence-based information about herbs, botanicals, supplements, etc, which can be a source of confusion for many people with cancer and other conditions. The link to the cinnamon listing is: http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/79/topic/redir.aspx?C=a41b865196644ca1a70fc680eaa9a727&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.mskcc.org%2fmskcc%2fhtml%2f84132.cfm - it includes an overview of current published research. And for the question about fish oil, here's the listing for Omega3, which you and others may find useful: http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/79/topic/redir.aspx?C=a41b865196644ca1a70fc680eaa9a727&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.mskcc.org%2fmskcc%2fhtml%2f69316.cfm 

I hope this information is helpful, but of course, it's always best to defer to your oncologist for the last word on anything you take.

Regards, -Esther

PS73

...your links did not come up but i opened them thru google.  What about the huge USDA marketing ploy to get all of us to drink more milk and eat more eggs?  I don't have a good source but I wonder just how estrogenic chicken eggs and cows milk is in comparison to a tsp of cinnamon or a cup of soy? Sloan advocates that milk is a cancer preventative because of the calcium yet there is more calcium in a plate of collard greens than in a cup of lowfat milk. So then, what are we supposed to do?  Should we stay away from all vegetables/frutis/grains/legumes that have phytoestrogen components?  News flash, that excludes everything except eating a man made sandwich with plastic lettuce and nitrate rich deli meat on bleached white bread.  Sooner or later we are going to be told to only eat plants grown outside that were autoclaved or ozonated.  The only nutrients allowed will be those that were enriched per FDA standardization.  Not for me.

Esther, I don't mean to attack you as Im sure you are thinking you are doing your due diligence by posting. Here is an excerpt regarding xenoestrogens and how sloan doesn't think dioxin and chlorinated chemicals are of concern when it comes to breast cancer (I could go on about the board of directors at Sloan who are involved with the ag companies but I will not).  Wolff concludes her article with the suggestion "that environmental chemical contamination with organochlorine residues may be an important etiologic factor in breast cancer. Given the wide-spread dissemination of organochlorine insecticides in the environment and the food chain, the implications are far-reaching for public health intervention worldwide." Such a blunt statement prompted an immediate reaction from the ranks of the conventional cancer establishment. Stephen Sternberg, for example, a doctor working with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in direct response to Wolff's research, complained in a following issue of the same publication that "we appear to be in the middle of an uproar regarding breast cancer." Worrying about "misdirected funding," he went on to fuss that "the findings by Wolff et al require a more conservative conclusion before costly intervention studies are undertaken in an attempt to implicate organochlorine compounds in causation. ...I suggest that more caution be taken in ascribing possible causation of breast cancer to DDT and other organochlorines. The media and the public have a tendency to misinterpret or indulge in hyperbole in evaluating such reports."

I added the above quote because sometimes I wonder what Sloans intent is - I find Sloan to be incredibly biased and subjective in it's selection for what should be tested for cancer research.  The article was from 1996 yet still no testing is being conducted on researching dioxin in plastics and how xenoestrogens affects breast cells.  A "company" like Sloan should be able to tackle this.  

http://www.fwhc.org/health/xeno.htm