Cinnamon is a common spice made from tree bark that can be found in most family kitchens. It’s great for pies, bread, lattes, and plenty of other foods. It’s also been used for medical purposes for thousands of years. (Yes, thousands!) In modern medical research, the benefits of cinnamon have been studied and confirmed!
Amazingly, they’ve found several awesome benefits of cinnamon for women with polycystic ovary syndrome. As someone dedicated to natural and holistic means of healing and reversing PCOS, I found this research super helpful!
So, today, I am dedicating this post to the PCOS benefits of cinnamon and why you should consider adding it to your plan for symptom management and improvement. This is what you need to know about cinnamon and PCOS:
Cinnamon For PCOS
Cinnamon can be helpful for many women with PCOS! Specifically, cinnamon has healing properties for Cysters with the insulin resistant type of PCOS. (If you’re not sure of your type, take the quiz.) It has been shown to improve metabolic health and relieve some PCOS symptoms naturally. Here’s how cinnamon can help you with your PCOS healing journey:
Cinnamon Benefits For PCOS
Lowers blood sugar and insulin levels.
If you’re a Cyster with the insulin resistant type of PCOS, you know how difficult it is to get control your weight, blood sugars, and insulin levels. The insulin resistance can also cause plenty of unpleasant PCOS symptoms, so, for many of us, managing it is a high priority.
Cinnamon has been shown in a few studies to help with lowering blood glucose levels and improving insulin sensitivity! In one study, women taking 1500 mg of cinnamon a day had significant reductions in fasting blood glucose, insulin, and insulin resistant status. The improved insulin levels also helped with weight loss in the study, making cinnamon potentially one of the best supplements to support a healthy metabolism!
Regulates cholesterol levels.
The same study that found cinnamon improves insulin levels, also found that cinnamon helps balance cholesterol levels. It lowered LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) and increased HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol) to help improve overall metabolic health.
Improves menstrual regularity.
Studies suggest that cinnamon actually helps menstrual regularity! Research in one study showed that women taking 1.5 grams of cinnamon a day had more regular and frequent menstrual cycles than those in the placebo group who did not take it. This improved menstrual regularity is super helpful for women with PCOS who often struggle with unpredictable periods and infertility.
Reduction of androgen levels.
Additional research on the insulin sensitivity benefits of cinnamon for PCOS finds that the metabolic benefits of cinnamon actually helps reduce androgen levels in Cysters, too. Androgens are male sex hormones like testosterone that can be the reason for lots of PCOS symptoms like acne, irregular menstrual cycles, mood swings, infertility, and obesity.
The thing is, high insulin levels actually encourage your ovaries to produce more testosterone. So, studies found that as insulin levels went down with cinnamon supplements, so did testosterone levels! (Here’s more ways to naturally lower testosterone with PCOS, if this is a struggle of yours.)
Fights free radicals.
Free radicals are unstable molecules that are formed naturally in your metabolism, but they become a problem when your body creates excess in response to stress, alcohol, smoking, saturated fats, or environmental toxins. When there are too many free radicals, they can damage cells, accelerate aging, and cause disease and cancer.
However, antioxidants fight free radicals. Vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, manganese, zinc, and, of course, cinnamon are all antioxidants in nature and help lower the number of free radicals in the body. Here’s the study that discovered this with cinnamon.
How To Use Cinnamon For PCOS
Drink cinnamon tea.
The best part about cinnamon as a remedy is that you don’t have to get used to some unusual flavor. (Hello, turmeric.) Cinnamon is already naturally in our diets and most of us like it! So, to implement it into your diet is pretty easy.
One of my favorite ways to integrate it into my day is through cinnamon tea. You can make it in a lot of ways, from pre-bagged tea to loose leaf tea. Or, you could even use a cinnamon stick and hot water! On The Cysterhood App I have a recipe for Warming Cinnamon Tea & Orange Cooler. It’s delicious and packs a ton of PCOS benefits.
Here are more of the best teas for PCOS.
Add cinnamon to smoothies.
You can also add cinnamon to your smoothies! Cinnamon compliments several common smoothie ingredients, like banana, peanut butter, blueberry, pumpkin, apple, strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla. I make pumpkin pie, blueberry pie, and peanut butter smoothies all the time and always add cinnamon to add flavor and extra PCOS benefits! (You can find all of my smoothie recipes on the app, too.)
Sprinkle it on your food.
You could also add cinnamon to your food. Sprinkle it on or mix it into oatmeal, chia pudding, pancakes, waffles, baked fruit, toast, and more! Savory dishes can be complemented by cinnamon, too. Pork chops, chili, ham, and roasts are just a few flavors that could pair well with cinnamon.
Take a cinnamon supplement.
Adding cinnamon into your diet is a great way to take cinnamon, but it can be difficult to determine if you’re getting enough that way. One of the best ways to get the benefits of cinnamon is through a supplement. Below, I have some recommendations:
Cinnamon Supplements For PCOS
Pure Encapsulations: Cinnamon WS
Pure Encapsulations is a favorite supplement brand of mine, because I can have confidence it supports my PCOS diet goals. They’re free from wheat, eggs, tee nuts, peanuts, gluten , artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, coatings, shellacs, and GMOs. Basically, the cinnamon capsule contains only what’s needed with no extras. This way, you know your supplements are doing the most for you! These capsules include 125 mg of cinnamon.
NOW Supplements: Cinnamon Bark
NOW is another quality brand that’s free of a lot of the extras. There’s no yeast, wheat, gluten, soy, corn, milk, egg, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, artificial colors, or GMOs in their product. These cinnamon capsules are also GMP Certified and bump up the dosage size to 600 mg. So, if your doctor recommends a higher daily dose of cinnamon, this brand might be best! Luckily, it comes at a great price too.
NutriFlair Organic Ceylon Cinnamon
Ceylon cinnamon is just another name for cinnamon bark, which is the cinnamon powder in these supplements. Like the others, NutriFlair is organic and free of gluten, GMOs, and other filler. Where NutriFlair differs is its dosing. It doubles the dosage from the NOW Supplements version and delivers 1200 mg of cinnamon. Again, consult with your doctor about dosage before choosing a supplements brand.
Nature’s Bounty Cinnamon Plus Chromium
Nature’s Bounty mixes cinnamon and chromium into one supplement, which is honestly a great combo for managing PCOS insulin resistance through vitamins! This brand also doesn’t contain any GMOs, gluten, sugar, artificial flavors, or artificial sweeteners. It includes 400 mcg of chromium, 500 mg of cinnamon bark, and 375 mg of cinnamon extract. It’s one of the less expensive on the list as well.
Clean Nutraceuticals Ceylon Cinnamon
This final brand is another combination supplement! It has cinnamon, apple cider vinegar, zinc, chromium, turmeric curcumin, berberine, and ginseng. In all of that, there is 300 total mg of cinnamon and plenty of other vitamins and minerals that are helpful to support a PCOS body. Clean Nutraceuticals, as the name suggests, is made with all natural ingredients and is GMP certified. They’re also formulated in the USA!
Cinnamon can help improve insulin resistance, cholesterol levels, and hormone balance!
The right foods and supplements are key to natural PCOS healing. You can find some of my most recommended PCOS supplements here, but you should consider adding cinnamon to that list too if insulin resistance is a struggle of yours. You can learn more about insulin resistance in this episode of the A Cyster and Her Mister podcast, and don’t forget to browse the blog for more must-have information on PCOS healing!
