I am not generally in favor of pharmaceutical companies or their highly toxic products. In some cases however, there is such massive need to assist people with some conditions that any research assistance is welcome. Here is news of a company using a herb in research to combat diabetes.
PhytoMedical Technologies corporation, an early stage research-based biopharmaceutical company focused on the identification, development, and eventual commercialization of innovative plant derived pharmaceutical and nutraceutical compounds, is researching use of cinnamon [1] for treating type-2 diabetes.
Through a three-way Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service and Iowa State University, PhytoMedical's team of collaborating scientists is working to synthesize several polyphenolic compounds originally isolated and characterized from cinnamon bark which increase sugar metabolism by a factor of 20 in test tube assays using fat cells.
Further evidence of the efficacy of these compounds has been presented in a study published in Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association, on 60 people with type-2 diabetes who ingested small amounts of cinnamon daily.
This study showed that as little as one gram of cinnamon per day, that's just one-fourth of a teaspoon twice a day, can lower blood sugar by an average of 18 to 29 percent, triglycerides (fatty acids in the blood) by 23 to 30 percent, LDL (or "bad") cholesterol by 7 to 27 percent and total cholesterol by 12 to 26 percent. Changes in HDL ("good") cholesterol were not significant.
Amazingly, the study found that the beneficial effects of cinnamon lasted for at least 20 days after people stopped taking it. Hopefully this benefit will remain or be exceeded in any products realeased as a result of the research.
One can only hope that the final product will not be a synthesized copy of an individual isolated compound extracted from the cinnamon plant. That is the typical route followed by pharmaceutical companies because it allows them to cash in by taking out a patent and restricting access to the product. If that happens, just remember how they started and start collecting your cinnamon.