How a sprinkle of cinnamon can soothe your stomach: Spice aids digestion by reducing temperature in the organ by 2C

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A sprinkle of cinnamon will not just add flavour to your diet - the spice cools the stomach down making it healthier, new research showed.

The exotic spice is known to have anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties and has been used in Chinese medicine to treat colds, indigestion and cramps.

Now Australian researchers found cinnamon lowers stomach temperature, which aids digestion, by up to two degrees.

Australian researchers found cinnamon lowers stomach temperature by up to two degrees 

This in turn avoids damage to the stomach's lining, reducing inflammation and many diseases of the guts.

This property may also explain why the rust-coloured spice from a tree bark is so popular in hot countries.

Study researcher Dr Jian Zhen Ou from RMIT University's School of Engineering in Melbourne said: 'Altogether cinnamon cooled the stomach by up to 2 degrees Celsius.

'No wonder cinnamon is so popular in warm regions as taking it makes people feel better and gives them a feeling of cooling down.'

The research published in Scientific Reports was carried out on pigs as part of a bigger study at RMIT into gut health using swallowable gas sensor capsules or smart pills.

Stomach gases from fermentation are linked to a number of gastrointestinal disorders such as ulcer, tumour related illnesses, inflammable bowel diseases and irritable bowel syndromes.

This aids digestion and prevents damage to the stomach's lining, reducing inflammation and many diseases of the guts

Yet gastroenterologists are still unable to differentiate between some of the most ordinary disorders of the gut and consequently patients are misdiagnosed.

The gas sensor capsule was developed to address this.

Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh said: 'The gases of the gut are the by-product of the fermentation processes during digestion, affected by the gut state and can consequently provide the needed information regarding the health of the gut.'

He added results seemed to show that cinnamon maintained the integrity of the stomach wall.

He said: 'When pigs feed at room temperature, carbon dioxide (CO2) gas increases in their stomach.

'Cinnamon in their food reduces this gas by decreasing the secretion of gastric acid and pepsin from the stomach walls, which in turn cools the pigs' stomachs during digestion.

'When the pigs are hot, they hyperventilate, which reduces CO2 production. With cinnamon treatment, CO2 decreases even further.

'This not only cools the pigs but leads to a significant improvement in their overall health.'

He explained the heat-stress effects on the gut physiological abnormalities were well-known as 'the shunting of blood from the central circulation to the periphery reduces the perfusion to the viscera, particularly the gastrointestinal tract, which may result in tissue hypoxia and intestinal mucosal injury.

'Damage to the integrity of the intestinal wall has been linked to a reduction in permeability and associated with gut inflammation and endotoxemia, which can significantly alter nutrient digestive and absorptive functionalities and hence the intestinal gas profile.

'On the other hand, supplemental cinnamon (cinnamomum verum) is chosen as a representative therapeutic agent due to its anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and free radical scavenging properties in the gastrointestinal tract.

'These advantageous characterises make this spice an ideal candidate for maintaining normal digestive functionalities and intestinal barrier integrity under the heat-stress condition, while at the same time it has relatively minor adverse-effects that cause minimum disturbance on the intestinal microbial community.'