We use cinnamon a lot this time of year.  It's in pumpkin pie, spice cake, egg nog, gingerbread and many other dishes.  But cinnamon is more than a deliteful spice, it also has healing properties.
    Cinnamon contains anti-clotting chemicals that help prevent blood clots.  It can stop the growth of some harmful bacteria and fungus including Candida, or yeast infection.  It's ability to slow down the groth of bacteria make it useful as a preservative.  Cinnamon tea with honey and a dash of pepper can help colds and flu.  Cinnamon powder mixed with lime juice is an old treatment for acne.
    The one we hear about most today is that cinnamon is fairly effective in maintaining our blood-sugar level.  It does this in two ways.   One, it slows down the rate at which the stomach empties after eating and, two it helps diabetics respond better to insulin.  A recent study by the USDA found that it increases the body's insulin-dependent ability to use glucose roughly 20-fold.
    In Ayurvedic medicine, cinamon mixed with honey is used to treat a number of illnesses such as:
Rub a mixture of honey and cinnamon on insect bites
Drink cinnamon and honey tea for arthritis
The tea can also  be used for bladder infections


In folklore, the original phoenix story says that when the pheonix is ready to die, it builds a pyre or cinnamon wood.  The ancient Romans believed the scent was sacred and added it to funeral pyres also.