www.perpetualcommotion.com
"Give
with a free hand, but give only your own."
--
J.R.R. Tolkien The Children of
Hurin
Patricia's Protocol
-
Cinnamon Tea -
Part of an Effective Treatment for Corticobasal
Degeneration?
(and other tauopathies?)
I have nothing to sell you but hope, and that I give you for free.
The purpose of this web site is to provide you with information for when you meet with a physician to discuss what can be done for someone suffering from brain failure. You will have a list of questions to ask, and sources to read so that you can ask them intelligently. I want to share some of the information I've accumulated in my search to help my mother.
Synthetic pharmaceuticals and physician supervised treatment is certainly the preferred course of action to help the brain failure sufferer. But while you wait for the physicians (who may have treatments) to get off of their duffs and actually try something, here are two substances you can try. The research papers indicate that this may be the closest you will get to a cure in that these two substances interrupt key steps in the disease process. Pharmaceutical versions, if and when they ever develop them, should be stronger and more effective.
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Cinnamon "Tea" to Combat
Tauopathies:
[...such
as Alzheimer's disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP),
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD,
corticobasal ganglionic degeneration, CBGD, corticobasal syndrome,
CBS), etc] Tauopathy
Discussion Forum
NOTE: 4-21-2017 There is now a “water extract” of cinnamon available commercially. Costco sells a product called Cinsulin for people with Type II diabetes. It is a freeze-dried water extract of cinnamon. If it is as advertized, there should be no need to make the cinnamon tea.
Here's the "recipe" I use, plus
the procedure:
3 tablespoons of ground cassia cinnamon
2
bottles of mineral or bottled water, 1/2 liter bottles
1/2
teaspoon of baking soda
2 canning jars, 1 quart size
1
bamboo shish kabob skewer
1 cooking thermometer (candy
thermometer, etc.)
1 pan (see text)
Place 3
tablespoons of ground cinnamon in a 1 quart canning jar.
Measure 3-1/2 cups of water, mix into the cinnamon in the canning
jar. If you use another canning jar to measure the water, note
the level of the water on the jar, and use this to measure the proper
amount of water for future brews. Save the mineral water
bottles to store the "tea" in.
Add 1/2 teaspoon
of baking soda to cinnamon/water mixture and stir. At this
point, you can place the lid (without the ring!) on the jar to keep
dust or other foreign objects out. Place
the jar (or jars if you are doing more than one at a time) into a pan
with water in it. Place the thermometer in the pan of water,
off of the bottom. Place the pan with canning jars on the stove
and heat slowly to about 70-80°C (no higher than 90°C).
Heating slowly ensures that the water inside the canning jars is also
to the proper temperature. Of course, you can also measure the
temperature of the cinnamon/water solution if you want. When
the water reaches the right temperature, stir the cinnamon water
mixture for at least 1 minute.
Let the pan with the jars
cool. When cool enough to handle, place the jars on the counter to
cool to room temperature. This will probably take several
hours. When at room temperature, place in the refrigerator to
cool and let things settle out for a couple of days. Cinnamon
is basically like fine saw dust. Most of what was floating
around will have fallen to the bottom.
When it's ready,
pour off the water portion and save in one of the mineral water
bottles. Discard the "grounds" on the
bottom.
Optionally, you can run the water portion though a
coffee filter to remove more of the solids that are still floating
around. You will have to figure out a way to support such a
filter. I was able to obtain the plastic filter section of a
discarded coffee maker. This has ribs on the bottom that allow
the liquid to pass more easily. I set this on top of a recycled
1/2 gallon juice bottle, and pour the "tea" into the
filter. This setup is admittedly precarious, so you will have
to make use of what you have on hand or can find. I am not a
coffee drinker, but I imagine that using a coffee maker for this
purpose would result in the taste of cinnamon being present in future
coffee brews, so I don't recommend it. The filtering process
can be slow if you don't let the fine particle settle out for a
couple of days. It can take 3
or 4 hours since the filter clogs quickly.
++++
NOTES:
I've
tried "brewing" the "cinnamon tea" as described
on several diabetes web sites. I haven't been able to make the
process work, per the instructions. (Think of it more as "cinnamon
extract"-- extracting the water soluble components of cassia
cinnamon.) The process isn't as easy as it sounds. First, I
don't think a quart jar is large enough. Second, the liquid
foams up and oozes down the side of the jar when you pour in the
boiling water. Third, when you try to carefully "decant"
the water, it tends run down the side of the jar . Fourth,
there is a layer of icky stuff floating on the top. Fifth,
there is an awful lot of "grounds" in the bottom of the
jar. The first time I tried making the "tea", I used GFS
(Gordon Food Service) bulk cinnamon. More than half the volume of the
jar was occupied by the "grounds". Ick. There must be some
tricks to doing this.
I've done some experimenting with
using different brands of cinnamon. I put 1/2 tsp. of each
brand into a graduated "shot" glass. I filled a tea
kettle and put it on the stove to boil. Meanwhile, I filled a
pan with hot
tap water to dip the shot glasses into before filling them to the
same level with the boiling water from the tea kettle. I held
the glass by the top, dipped the bottom in the pan of hot water to
pre-heat. Then, I sat it on the kitchen counter, and poured in
the boiling water. Using a toothpick, I stirred the cinnamon up
so it was well mixed with the water, then let it sit until cool.
I found that different brands of cinnamon expanded more, leaving less
"cinnamon tea", and more icky, gloppy, sludge to be thrown
out.
A quart canning jar
is not large enough. A 1-quart canning jar holds EXACTLY 4 cups when
filled to the brim. When you pour the boiling water in, it foams up,
and oozes down the side. I cut back
to 3-1/2 cups of water, a bit less than 1/2 tsp of baking soda, and
three level tablespoons of ground cassia
cinnamon instead of "three well-rounded tablespoons".
I
use bottled mineral water in 1/2 liter (about 2 cups) bottles. I save
a bottle to store the extract in later.
The thermal shock
from the sudden increase in temperature when you pour boiling water
into a cold glass canning jar may cause it to crack. So, after
putting the three tablespoons of cinnamon in, it might be a good idea
to run hot tap water on the outside of the jar just before adding the
boiling water to pre-heat it. However, I have not had one of my Ball
1 quart canning jars crack yet, even though I have been skipping the
preheat step. Then, I set the jar in the kitchen sink so that
if it should break open while pouring in the boiling water, I won't
get scalded. To keep the jar from tipping over, I set it on a
small cutting board positioned over the drain.
After
pouring in about 3/4 of the the boiling water, I use a "shish
kabob" stick to briefly stir the mixture to ensure there are no
pockets of dry cinnamon trapped on the bottom. Do NOT stir so
much that the foamy material at the top drops to the bottom.
This will cause the liquid to be excessively cloudy. Most of it
will drop to the bottom as the liquid cools. I don't know if
this effects the quality of the extract. After this first pour,
I allow the foam on the top to settle a bit, or break some of the
bubbles with the end of the stir stick, and then pour in the rest of
the water. I let it cool off to room temperature on the kitchen
counter. When cool, I put the jar in the refrigerator to let things
settle out over night. I often set the canning jar lid on the
jar to keep out any creepy-crawlies that might happen by. I
know this also keeps moisture in, and air out, so it might affect
things.
I tried not adding the baking soda to the water,
but this resulted in a "coffee and cream" colored, opaque
liquid. Again, I don't know if this affects the quality of the
resulting extract for the purposes of "untangling tau
fibers".
The next day, I use a coffee filter in a
small strainer held over a funnel stuck in the mouth of the now empty
water bottle to decant the water. I slowly pour off the cinnamon
water from the canning jar, leaving the sludge-like "grounds"
behind. The floaties on top were caught in the coffee filter, or
skimmed off with a spoon. Try to avoid getting the sludgy
grounds into the strainer, as this seems to clog it up in a hurry.
It takes a long time for the cinnamon water to get through the
strainer. Hours. I think non-soluble particles still
floating in the water get stuck in the filter and clog it up. I
salvaged the plastic filter section from a discarded coffee maker and
use that to hold the filter. This has ridges on the bottom to
let the liquid seep thorough. It's best to set something up so
you don't have to stand there and hold it.
To keep the
liquid from running down the side of the jar, I put the back of the
spoon up against the lip of the jar just before I pour in order to
direct the flow into the coffee filter.
The left over
sludge in the bottom gets deposited in the nearest chipmunk hole I
can find. I'll bet they love that! I don't recommend
pouring it down the drain of the kitchen sink. Maybe the
toilet, but even that I'm not too enthusiastic about.
We've
been giving my mom 1/2 cup of the aqueous cinnamon extract three
times per day instead of capsules. We get about 2 cups of
liquid from each jar. This means that there are 9 teaspoons
worth of aqueous cinnamon extract per 2 cups, or 2.5 (9/4) teaspoons
per 1/2 cup. When mixed with 1/2 cup of apple juice, it
actually tastes pretty good, if you like the taste of cinnamon and
apples. It doesn't have the characteristic hotness of the cinnamon
oil. I estimate that this should be the equivalent of several times
the raw ground cinnamon I had been giving her in apple sauce. As a
reminder, there are apparently enzymes in saliva that will degrade
the active components of the cinnamon extract, so the less contact
with saliva, the more effective it will be. Stomach acid deactivates
the saliva enzymes, so taking the ground cinnamon in capsules should
be effective. In my mother's case, she insists on thoroughly chewing
up everything, so I can't give her pills. I have to mix all her
medications with food. Apple sauce seems to work the best. Since she
even chews the apple sauce, this has not been the best way to deliver
the cinnamon. That's why I switched over to the cinnamon extract
(tea).
Another thing to note is that you will find
different qualities of cinnamon available. I have no idea what the
best characteristics are, but judging solely on what the fraction of
"grounds" at the bottom of the jar is compared to the
cinnamon water floating on top, I'm choosing the cinnamon based on
'the less grounds the better'. I figure that if the the grounds
occupy a large fraction of the jar, and the cinnamon water is cloudy,
then there must be a lot of non-cinnamon filler material.
I
hope everyone is trying this "water soluble cinnamon extract"
idea. Even if you are pursuing other therapies, the goal is to stop
the progression of the disease. Leave it to the researchers to do the
studies on the effectiveness of any particular treatment. And with
this, YOU have the power to make it happen. You don't have to get
anyone else's permission, convince someone else to do something or
plead with an insurance company. Well... except if the person is in a
nursing home and they won't give it to them. I don't know what to do
in that case. I suppose you could make up the 50/50 cinnamon tea and
apple juice and try to get the staff to give it to the person by
telling them, "oh, it's her favorite drink".
Update
February 21, 2010:
The ethnic grocery store (Middle
Eastern) I had been buying the cinnamon from changed vendors.
The new stuff just doesn't work out as well. I get mostly
sludge. Very discouraging. I will have to find another source.
In the Person/Anderson/Graves
article, they mention getting their Ceylon cinnamon from Penzey's
Spices in Brookfield, WI.
Also, Anderson has been
involved with a company that produces a water-soluble cinnamon
extract called "Cinnulin".
This home-made cinnamon tea is essentially a crude process for
obtaining the water-soluble components of cinnamon. Swanson
Health Products is one distributor of Cinnulin, but there may be
others.
Update July 30, 2010:
A recent
discussion about the different types of cinnamon (cassia or
Chinese vs. Ceylon or "sweet") makes me think that the
ethnic grocery store is selling Ceylon cinnamon. I'm not sure
yet. It fits the descriptions I've read, but I am going to
obtain some Ceylon cinnamon, and compare them. If it is in fact
Ceylon cinnamon, it is not necessary to make the
tea.
***********
If you don't try, there is no
way in the world you will
succeed.
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Home
Preface Brain
Failure Notes References
pg. 1 References pg.
2
Nutritional
Alternatives Patricia's
Protocol Tauopathy
Discussion
Forum
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You
can reach me by mai|ing perpetualcommotion.com at gmail
Updated: February July 30,
2010
Inception: April 30, 2008