Welcome My Oil Lab to cinnamon. I am Dr. Jeff, and this little one here is Megan, and we love this oil. It comes all the way from Sri Lanka. It's the big sister to cassia. Two completely different plants, somewhat similar chemistry. I think they smell and taste a bit the same. However, Megan disagrees.
Megan: Disagree.
Dr. Jeff: But regardless, a great oil.
Megan: Yeah, so I prefer cinnamon. I prefer the aroma, I prefer the flavor of cinnamon. It is a wonderful essential oil. Now different from Cassia, which the type of plant it is, this comes from a tropical evergreen tree. It's a cinnamon tree, and it grows to about 45 feet tall. It's pretty amazing.
Dr. Jeff: And both of these oils are distilled from the bark of the respective tree, cassia from the cassia shrub, cinnamon from this tall, tropical evergreen. The chemistry trans-cinnamaldehyde is the major molecule of both of these oils. However, cinnamon is about 55% this molecule, where cassia is about 80%, and in both of these oils have about 47 to 48 other molecules that make up the rest of, or the remaining percentage of this oil, making the chemistry extremely diverse.
Now where cassia is a great oil for supporting our kidneys, cinnamon is wonderful at supporting our pancreas, healthy blood sugar levels, and is a wonderful oil for our cardiovascular system. There's been studies where shows that it helps with the relaxation of the vessels of our body, and when our vessels relax, it does great things for our blood pressure, so any type of cardiovascular concern, or any type of pancreas or blood sugar concern, cinnamon is a wonderful oil to use.
Megan: Which makes perfect sense why it's a great for supporting your metabolism, as well. It's in one of our metabolizing blends, which we'll get to way later on in this series. I love using cinnamon for this reason.
I put one to two drops just right in my mouth any time I'm having a craving for sugar, or any time I wanna curb my appetite, or if Jeff's hangry, I just put a drop or two of cinnamon in his mouth, and it tides him over for a while.
Dr. Jeff: Because it curbs the cravings, it's a wonderful oil to put on one drop on a piece of 80% or more dark chocolate and have that be your treat when you're trying to get off sugar and change your nutrition plan.
Megan: Yeah, so cinnamon is highly known in the cooking industry, and it's used for many, many different wonderful dishes looking for that extra spice or that cinnamon flavor. Again, it brings me back to the holidays every time we diffuse this oil.