I Spent 34 Years Studying Ancient Medicine. Then My Blood Sugar Hit 181, and the History I Taught Became Personal.

By Dr. Cornelius Carter, PhD | Medical historian, 34 years

I used to blame the afternoon exhaustion on long hours in my office.

The broken sleep was getting older. The paragraph I had to read six times was probably just tiredness.

Then my physician put two numbers in front of me: fasting glucose, 181. A1C, 7.1.

For 34 years, I had studied how people throughout history dealt with illness.

Now I was sitting across from my own doctor, wondering what came next.

If you’ve ever left an appointment thinking about how much of your life those numbers might change, you’ll understand why that afternoon stayed with me.

I wanted to know what I needed to do. I also wanted my ordinary days back.

My work had taught me how to follow a question through old records, translations and overlooked details.

That was where I eventually turned.

But I didn’t begin with an ingredient in mind. I began with the same worries any patient might take home.

Was this why I felt so tired? Why couldn’t I sleep properly? And was I going to keep feeling this way?

At First, I Blamed the Long Hours

The changes had worked their way into my routine gradually.

By two in the afternoon, I would be fighting to keep my eyes open. A passage I could once have worked through without difficulty would take several attempts.

I’d put it aside for the next morning, when I hoped I’d feel clearer.

Then the next morning would arrive with its own work, and the unfinished pages would still be waiting.

At night, I would wake to use the bathroom and struggle to get back to sleep. By breakfast, I already felt behind.

I wasn’t looking for a new supplement.

I wanted to understand why things that used to feel ordinary had started taking so much effort.

Then My Physician Put the Numbers in Front of Me

My fasting glucose was 181. My A1C was 7.1.

My physician discussed starting metformin. I listened, asked questions, and tried to take in what the appointment meant for my care.

The numbers gave me something concrete to address. They also gave me something new to worry about.

At home, I kept thinking about the afternoons I’d lost to exhaustion and the nights when I couldn’t settle back to sleep. I didn’t want to become so used to feeling worn out that I stopped expecting anything different.

I needed medical care. Alongside that, I wanted to investigate a question my work had left me unusually well equipped to explore.

How had earlier physicians described the problems I was now trying to understand?

The Question I Took Back to My Study

I had spent decades tracing the way medical knowledge moved between cultures.

A description might survive in one language, be translated into another, and appear again centuries later with a different name or preparation. Following those connections was familiar work.

This time, I wasn’t preparing a lecture.

I was reading with my own health in mind, noticing descriptions I might previously have treated as another passage to translate or compare.

I returned to writers including Dioscorides and Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna.

I followed references to thirst, wasting and the ways physicians observed changes in their patients.

Old terminology doesn’t map neatly onto a modern diagnosis. But it gave me a trail to follow.

One account eventually stopped me…

A passage about patients whose sweet urine attracted ants, and a preparation made from the bark of a tree.

The Bark in the Old Account

The manuscript account was attributed to a 12th-century Arabic translation of an earlier Sinhala medical text from Sri Lanka.

It described cinnamon bark prepared with coconut oil.

Cinnamon was familiar to me from the history of trade as well as medicine.

It had traveled across shipping routes and been bound up with monopolies, colonial power and control of Sri Lanka’s valuable harvest.

Portuguese and Dutch interests competed for access to that trade. Now I was reading about the bark in a much more personal context.

The part that held my attention was the preparation. The account described what was combined with the bark, not simply the name of the plant.

The age of an account couldn’t prove that a treatment worked, or establish a modern dose. It had given me a reason to investigate further.

For the first time since the appointment, I had a specific research question to pursue.

Why the Name Alone Wasn’t Enough

Once I began reading about cinnamon itself, I found distinctions I hadn’t needed to think about when buying it for the kitchen.

Ceylon cinnamon is known as Cinnamomum verum. Cassia refers to other cinnamon varieties that are also widely sold.

They can share a familiar smell without being identical ingredients.

One difference is coumarin content: cassia generally contains considerably more than Ceylon cinnamon.

High exposure can be a concern, particularly for susceptible people.

I also found products containing ground bark and others containing concentrated extracts.

The word on the front didn’t tell me everything about the preparation inside.

Cinnamon’s usefulness for diabetes remains uncertain, and historical use doesn’t resolve that uncertainty.

I wanted to understand what I was considering and discuss it in the context of my medical care.

By this point, I had a reason to look closely. I was following a question that had begun with my symptoms and my test results.

What Happened When I Tried It

My first purchase was a $16.99 bottle of dry Ceylon cinnamon capsules.

After three weeks, my fasting reading had moved from 181 to 174. I had hoped for more, but that small change couldn’t tell me what part of my routine was responsible or what to expect next.

I went back to the account and reread the preparation. The oil was there, just as it had been the first time.

Eventually, my own routine included Ceylon cinnamon mixed with MCT oil derived from coconut oil. It was gritty and inconvenient, and I began keeping notes about my readings and how I felt.

Later, when I looked for a prepared product, those experiences shaped the questions I asked.

By then, I wanted a routine that would be easier to manage at breakfast and when I traveled. These were the details I checked before choosing it.

What I Chose

The brand I eventually chose was Metabolae.

Its formula was described as true Ceylon cinnamon sourced from Sri Lanka, DNA-verified as Cinnamomum verum, in a concentrated 12:1 extract.

Each softgel was described as providing a 7,200 mg whole-cinnamon equivalent, with the extract suspended in MCT oil from coconuts.

That equivalent figure isn’t the actual weight of extract inside the softgel.

I wanted to understand the distinction, alongside the company’s testing information and serving instructions.

The practical appeal was straightforward…

A prepared softgel instead of opening capsules, measuring oil, and swallowing a gritty mixture.

I had managed the earlier routine at home, but it was awkward when I was traveling or trying to leave early.

There were ingredients to pack and an explanation to give every time someone asked what I was making.

A labeled, prepared product made those practical details easier. That convenience was a reason for my choice, separate from the results I’d already recorded.

One softgel a day, following the label directions.

SPECIES DNA-verified Ceylon cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum, sourced from Sri Lanka.	PREPARATION 12:1 concentrated extract with a stated 7,200 mg whole-cinnamon equivalent per softgel.
FORMULATION Cinnamon extract suspended in MCT oil from coconuts, supplied in a softgel.	VERIFICATION Third-party testing and product information to review before ordering.

The Appointment That Changed the Conversation

Before I explain what I wanted from that simpler routine, I want to be clear about the timeline.

The readings below came from the earlier period when I was using my homemade preparation.

They predated my switch to Metabolae and aren’t results from a trial of that product.

When I first began keeping records, my fasting glucose was 181 and my A1C was 7.1.

My concentration was poor, my sleep was broken, and I was tired of organizing my day around how exhausted I expected to feel.

Later entries included 134, 118, and 101. Keeping the record meant I could show the sequence at the appointment rather than arrive with a few numbers I happened to remember.

My physician asked what had changed. We discussed the routine and the records together. It was a more useful conversation than trying to remember individual readings from weeks earlier.

Individual account supplied for review. These figures do not establish what caused the changes or predict another person’s results.

What I Kept Watching Between Appointments

I paid attention to more than the meter.

I noticed an afternoon when I kept working instead of fighting to stay awake.

I noticed sleeping through the night.

I noticed that reading felt absorbing again, rather than like a task I kept failing to finish.

Here Is What I Wanted Back

I wanted to sit at my desk and finish the work in front of me.

To read a paragraph once and follow it.

To enjoy dinner without thinking about how soon I could lie down. To wake in the morning feeling that the night had given me some rest.

Those things sound small until you find yourself arranging your life around their absence.

I used to put off a difficult piece of reading until the next morning.

Then the next morning would bring its own work, and the unfinished pages would still be waiting. At dinner, part of my attention would already be on getting to bed.

I missed being interested in what was happening in front of me. That was the everyday part of the story that a glucose reading couldn’t fully describe.

I had built a career around paying attention to details. When my own health became the subject, I wanted that same care in the decisions I made.

Switching to a prepared softgel made the morning routine simpler.

I could follow the label, keep the product information, and discuss it at my appointments without having to describe a homemade mixture.

That was where Metabolae fitted into my story: a simpler way to manage the supplement part of my morning, alongside the rest of my care.

You can review its current formula, pricing and availability below.

My search began with exhaustion, interrupted sleep and two numbers I couldn’t stop thinking about. History gave me a place to start investigating.

What I wanted throughout was the same: more of my attention for my work, my wife and the things I enjoyed. That was why the search mattered to me.

— Dr. Cornelius Carter, PhD | Medical history