Cinnamon is the new hero for poor learners. Scientists show in a new study that consuming cinnamon can convert bad students into good.
Learning in mice was found to be vital, said Dr. Kalipada Pahan, a researcher at Rush University and the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Centre in Chicago. Mice that were observed to be bad learners suddenly became top scorers after a month of treatment. Hence, poor-learning mice that had to grope for 150 seconds to find the right hole in the Barnes maze test managed to find it in just 60 seconds after a month of cinnamon treatment.
Studies show that cinnamon can produce sodium benzoate if the spice is broken down inside the body. Cinnamon's various compounds are "metabolized into sodium benzoate in the liver. Sodium benzoate then becomes the active compound, which readily enters the brain and stimulates hippocampal plasticity."
Sodium benzoate was found to improve the "structural integrity" of cells. Cinnamon is also said to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.
"Little is known about the changes that occur in the brains of poor learners. We saw increases in GABRA5 and a decrease in CREB in the hippocampus of poor learners. Interestingly, these particular changes were reversed by one month of cinnamon treatment," Pahan said.
The scientists tested the mice in a number of mazes that could keep the poor learners separate from the fast ones. Even as the fast learners took less time as well as fewer wrong turns, scientists found that the gap in the brain proteins that separated poor learners from fast ones were bridged after cinnamon treatment.
"Besides general memory improvement, cinnamon may target Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment [a precursor to Alzheimer's], and Parkinson's disease as well," Pahan explained.
Pahan said that it is advisable to take Sri Lanka-type cinnamons, which are free of coumarin, which could be toxic to the liver if consumed in large amounts.
The study was published in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology.
