Brain Food

Song of Solomon 4:14
“Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:”

On our previous Creation Moments broadcast, we had good news for coffee drinkers – specifically, that the caffeine in coffee does not make a person dehydrated. The long-held myth that coffee is a diuretic was the product of 90-years-old bad science. Well, today we’ve got even more good news about something you might already be consuming at breakfast. Once you hear how feeding it to laboratory mice improved their learning ability, you might want to make it a regular part of your family’s breakfast.

I’m talking about cinnamon. Kalipada Pahan from Rush University Medical Center said that consuming cinnamon “would be one of the safest and the easiest approaches to convert poor learners to good learners.”

He reached this conclusion after his research team discovered that feeding cinnamon to laboratory mice increased the levels of a protein called CREB in the brain’s hippocampus. This is the part of the brain that is known to be the key to learning.

Pahan reported, “We have successfully used cinnamon to reverse biochemical, cellular and anatomical changes that occur in the brains of mice with poor learning.” With this in mind, the research team is now investigating to see if cinnamon might be useful in the treatment of people with Parkinson’s disease.

Wasn’t it good of our Creator to give us so many foods and spices that are not only a joy to eat but healthful to our bodies?

Prayer: Oh Lord, You filled the Earth with an abundance of foods and spices that are delightful and healthful. This is a gift You have given to everyone, so let everyone praise You for creating them! Amen.

Author: Steven J. Schwartz
Ref: “Cinnamon may aid learning ability: Spice consumption made mice better learners,” ScienceDaily, 7/12/16. Deb Song, Rush University Medical Center press release. Photo: Pixabay.

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