 So we come next to cinnamon, it's a member of the Laurel family and this one is the medicinal variety Cinnamonum zealonicum which actually means from Ceylon or Sri Lanka, the old name for Sri Lanka Also known as cinnamonum virum which means true, the true cinnamon There is another species in use commercially for food flavouring for example and that's cinnamonium cinnamomum cassia. Now this is not the one we generally choose for medicinal purposes so in cooking yes it's fine, it gives a cinnamon like flavour but most of the properties that we want medicinally are better presented or available in higher quantities in the Sri Lankan version, cinnamomum zealonicum It's the inner peeled bark sometimes called cinnamon quills as in the picture there that we're using and also the essential oil of cinnamon, essential oil of cinnamon is very strongly antibacterial actually it's the sort of thing that we use to sort of disinfect areas as interestingly enough it's part of a formula that they used to call thieves oil and this dates back to the plague when thieves would go around robbing bodies of their valuables, their jewellery etc and in order to protect themselves from the pestilence of the plague they had this blend of oils that they got from the east from you know exotic oils that they blend together cinnamon was one of these so very very strongly protective against all kinds of microbes including viruses actually so cinnamon is spicy, sweet and hot so it's considered to be a warming herb it's a stimulating herb particularly to both blood and digestion it's also considered to be nourishing obviously we use it in food production but that heat that digestive enhancing heat if you like helps the flow of nourishment in the body it has a very high essential oil content up to four percent in the bark of the tree and also found in the chemistry of the plant phenolic compounds which as we say tend to have antimicrobial properties tannins sinzelenin and sinzelenol and kumarin as well now kumarin has blood thinning properties so anything that moves the blood improves its quality improves the way in which it's able to nourish the tissues of the body cinnamon is a really really important herb from this point of view so we would call it in in a digestive context we would say that it is carminative and stomachic stimulating aromatic warming slightly diaphoretic so this means it can help with um sweating or making causing you to break a sweat if you need to it redistributes stuck energy that might be in the core of the body so so to equalize it and send it out to the periphery and by that same token sometimes to expel it through the skin so very very good as what we call blood moving therapy and it's also blood sugar regulating as well it's a very good herb to include in what we might call pre-diabetic situations and particularly if you are suffering from hypoglycemia which is drops in blood sugar cinnamon can actually help to to stabilize or maintain blood sugar levels if you enjoyed this video please give it a like and subscribe below so you don't miss any future content to learn more about cnm or its courses head to www.naturopathy-uk.com