Our weight is a key factor in our overall health and wellbeing, with obesity significantly raising your risk for dangerous conditions such as type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease.
Having too much visceral fat around your waist is also linked to these problems, and can signal high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
While making healthy and consistent lifestyle changes can lead to weight loss, one expert recommended adding a specific ingredient to your diet to help speed up the process.
Speaking on his TikTok channel, Harvard-trained medical doctor and researcher Doctor William Li shared the health benefits of cinnamon.
“What if I told you that you probably have a powerful ingredient for burning fat and improving your metabolism in your pantry right now,” he said.
A spice that comes from the bark of a tree, cinnamon is most often used around Christmas time to add a festive flavour to your desserts and drinks.
Dr Lee said: “I’m talking about cinnamon and you probably think about cinnamon as a powder that you sprinkle on top of hot apple cider or an apple pie, but cinnamon is actually the bark of a tree and it comes rolled up in a stick called a quill.”
He revealed it could help improve your metabolism, the chemical reactions in the body’s cells that change food into energy.
“Cinnamon has more than 20 different bioactives that can influence your metabolism,” he continued.
“And one of them is called cinnamaldehyde which can trigger your brain to release a hormone that fires up your brown fat and this can improve your metabolism.
“A clinical study from India showed that cinnamon can improve blood glucose, shrink waist size and even reverse metabolic syndrome.”
This study, published in Lipids in Health and Disease journal in 2017, compared the effects of consuming three grams of cinnamon supplement daily for 16 weeks to taking a placebo.
Study participants who were given cinnamon were found to lose weight and have lower blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol at the end of the trial, suggesting it could help reverse metabolic syndrome.
Metabolic syndrome is the clinical name for when someone has a combination of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity
According to the study, people with metabolic syndrome are three times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to people without it.
“These individuals are also twice as more susceptible to die from type 2 diabetes and heart attack or stroke,” it explained.
The study concluded: “In this 16 weeks study, we show significant decrease in measures of glycemia, adiposity including abdominal obesity, lipids, blood pressure and major decrease in percentage of individuals having metabolic syndrome with single nutrient intervention of cinnamon.”
However, it said: “While the results of this investigation are promising, they should be tested in a larger sample over [a] longer period of time.”
Dr Li added that the positive effects could be seen with just half a teaspoon of cinnamon a day.
If you are concerned about your weight, cholesterol, blood sugar or blood pressure levels you should speak to your GP.