I heard years ago (I read it in Balance, the magazine of Diabetes UK) that cinnamon is a natural antiglycaemic and thus could be beneficial to diabetics, particularly DM2. This has recently become of interest to me again; I was in hospital for five weeks (admitted for tachycardia, kept in for obstructive sleep apnoea), and when admitted was erroneously flagged as being treated for my DM2 by diet only. (This despite the fact that my medicines box contained some very conspicuous repaglinide packets.)

Of course, not surprisingly, during my stay I had some of the worst BG readings since I was diagnosed in 2000 (one was over 12 IIRC) -- not helped by the fact that my stay included the Christmas period, when I allow myself a few sweet treats. The doctor who discharged me said that over my stay I'd had an average reading of 7·0 (again not surprising — my usual average is more like 5·5); what did surprise me was that he regarded this as "good". (Evidently, he knew little about diabetes and even less about statistics; 7·0 is supposed to be the maximum reading, so if it's the average (implying that about half the readings in the sample are above that), that's not good but very bad as the readings are overall far too high.)

I've now been discharged (two weeks ago) and put myself back on repaglinide, and my readings have dropped back to normal. But repaglinide is no longer on my repeat-prescriptions list (leaving me officially without any BG medication, as metformin has been cancelled due to kidney problems), and when I saw a nurse yesterday for a drug review, she didn't restore it because she took the same view as the doctor!

I've now emailed my GP (pointing out the argument I've given here, and that as I suffer from background retinopathy, good BG control is vitally important), and am awaiting a reply.