© Getty ImagesWin win: It tastes good and it’s good for you.
Consider cinnamon tea your health boost in a cup. This hot, nourishing beverage feeds your body well, thanks to the humble yet powerful combination of infusing healthy cinnamon into boiling water.
Serving up a delicious cup is easy. To make cinnamon tea at home, Tara Coleman, CN, clinical nutritionist, recommends simply simmering 1 cinnamon stick in 1 cup of water for 15 minutes. Strain out the cinnamon and enjoy. “Add a slice of lemon and a little honey if you want a sweeter drink,” she says. No time to simmer? You can also find cinnamon tea bags at your grocery or online.
The best part about cinnamon tea isn’t even how good it tastes. Here are some of the healthiest benefits of drinking this type of tea, from hydration to anti-inflammation.
Cinnamon tea provides serious antioxidants.
“Cinnamon tea may offer numerous health benefits, at least in part due to its rich polyphenol antioxidant content,” explains LeeAnn Smith Weintraub, MPH, RD, a nutrition counselor and consultant. Polyphenols are micronutrients found in plants that are packed with antioxidant properties, which help protect your cells against damage caused by free radicals, fight inflammation, and prevent disease.
It helps lower inflammation.
Cinnamon is a powerful anti-inflammatory agent, and sipping it as tea offers those benefits, too. As one study notes, out of 115 foods tested, Sri Lankan cinnamon was found to be one of the “most potent anti-inflammatory foods.” Research published in the Journal of AOAC found that cinnamon’s high volume of phenolic compounds help reduce inflammation in the body.
Cinnamon tea helps manage blood sugar.
Whip up a cup of cinnamon tea to keep your blood sugar even. “[Cinnamon] has a compound that acts similar to insulin and helps move sugar from your blood into the cells,” explains Coleman. “It’s been shown to help with insulin resistance for up to 12 hours after you drink it.”
Its water content delivers nutrients more quickly.
It might sound obvious, but the water in cinnamon tea plays a significant, beneficial role as well, and many additional health perks come from the fact that tea is water-based. For one, water helps nourish your gastrointestional (GI) tract—so everything flows through your system more easily.
“Many health-promoting compounds in cinnamon are water soluble, and it’s safe to say, tea is an optimal way to ingest cinnamon,” Weintraub says. Water soluble is just a fancy way of describing something that dissolves in water, making cinnamon tea an ideal way to deliver cinnamon’s nutrients to your body.
Cinnamon tea is hydrating.
The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommend that men drink 15.5 cups of water a day and women drink 11.5 cups of water a day—and don’t forget that one cup of tea counts as one cup of hydration for the day.
Article by Nicole Clancy for Real Simple©
Source: 5 Healthy Reasons to Sip Cinnamon Tea (msn.com)
