In grade school, my teachers would always give my class cinnamon gum before our yearly standardized tests. They would tell us that it would keep us concentrated and make us smarter! To this day I still chew cinnamon gum when I take tests because I have adapted to this idea that it will make me smarter… but does it really?
The Rush University Medical Center created a study in July 2016 to test how cinnamon effects the brain. The easiest and safest way for them to figure this out, was to test it on mice. Scientists fed slower learning mice food and observed as they became smarter. This is because of the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a part of our brain that does everything involved with memory, such as storing and organizing it. The mice were fed pure ceylon cinnamon and results were seen immediately. Right after consuming the cinnamon, the mice’s bodies metabolized and began turning into sodium benzoate. This showed that it was positively affecting their bodies and brains because sodium benzoate helps treat brain damage. Kalipada Pahan is has a PhD, and is the head researcher of the study and the Floyd A. Davis Professor of Neurology at Rush. He believes that cinnamon really does improve the learning and memory of the brain. They then put the mice in a maze learning experiment. The maze was a Barnes maze. The constant variable in this test was by having all of the (soon to be experimented) mice see how they would do on this task, without consuming any cinnamon. These results were taken and calculated. A month later, these same mice were given the cinnamon to consume, and were given the same task, which was to finish the Barnes maze. It was found that the slow learning mice began to start learning as quickly as the fast learning mice.
Next time you are taking an exam, studying for a test, or just completing one of these blog posts, I suggest you chew cinnamon gum, or sprinkle some cinnamon on your toast. It is clearly shown that cinnamon is a brain booster and directly affects your hippocampus, leading you to learn better and focus.
Sources:
http://www.mydomaine.com/learning-benefits-of-cinnamon-study
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160712214659.htm
Pictures:
http://cleversysinc.com/products/behavioral-tasks/barnes-maze/
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2014/07/03/10-drinks-that-make-smarter/
I always heard that cinnamon was a natural fat burner, but I never heard of it making people more intelligent! I liked the whole idea behind your post, but felt more confused than educated on the subject. I had formulated so many questions after reading your post. For example, could the month in between both maze runs be considered a confounding variable? Could the 1-month aging be large enough to cause the mice to naturally become more mature, and intelligent? Also I do not understand how the presence of sodium benzoate shows that cinnamon makes the mice smarter. How does a chemical that helps treat brain damage, correlate to mice becoming smarter? Overall cool post, I really liked the topic.
This caught my eye right away when I was scrolling through. This is a very interesting article, this is something that I have never heard of before. I had no idea how much of an impact cinnamon could have on us. This reminds me of another food that has a lot of benefits, dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is said to have many positive health benefits, including: good source of nutrients, lower blood pressure, lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease. Its very interesting to read about all of these different food that have such a positive impact on us.
This caught my eye right away when I was scrolling through. This is a very interesting article, this is something that I have never heard of before. I had no idea how much of an impact cinnamon could have on us. This reminds me of another food that has a lot of benefits, dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is said to have many positive health benefits, including: good source of nutrients, lower blood pressure, lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease. Its very interesting to read about all of these different food that have such a positive impact on us.
https://authoritynutrition.com/7-health-benefits-dark-chocolate/
If an avocado is a super food then it seems as though cinnamon should be right along side with it. I had always heard of a folktale that chewing gum during your study sessions and the same flavor during the exam would increase your focus and ultimately lead to a better grade. I did not necessarily believe this, I just thought it was a made up thought or a type of placebo. Having read this blog though I am now a firm believer that it is true after all and it would only be rational for me to try it out myself. It is fascinating that things that are so seemingly easy to follow with a great benefit are not that well known. It is not unordinary to hear of foods having this ability on us as their are known “super foods” that have similar impacts on us. Here is an article that lists some super food which, like cinnamon, can have profound effects on us:
http://greatist.com/health/25-greatist-superfoods-and-why-theyre-super
Our body is honestly a mystery when regarding certain aspects of things such as, how cinnamon makes us smarter or whether it increases our focus it does not matter because our brain is so awesome that we still take this spice that our ancestor traded lots of their wealth away for just because it tasted sweet. Even now most people simply eat the cinnamon for the taste rather than for the way it affects our learning capabilities over all, if more people would read this article they would being to question so much more about the stuff we eat and it’s overall affect on our body and our minds.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/11/01/intelligence-foods.aspx
It is impressive how certain types of foods have an effect on our behavior or our health. I was amazed by the effects of cinnamon and how this affect our cognitive abilities. For this blog period I also talked about how a type of food can affect your life. I talked about how spicy food has an effect on your mortality. A study suggested there is a correlation between the amount of spicy food someone eats weekly and a lower risk of mortality. Here is an article about how avocados help decrease heart disease, obesity and more. There are several other examples of food that has an impact of your health that may be interesting as well such as strawberries (help your skin), oranges (immune system), corn (hemorrhoids).