Health Claims

In diabetic male rats, adding a small amount of sesame oil to their diet helps improve sperm movement and health, but a larger amount doesn't help — suggesting there's a sweet spot for how much works best.

Giving diabetic male rats sesame oil in their food for about two months seems to boost the number of important cells in their testicles that help make hormones like testosterone.

In diabetic male rats, eating sesame oil every day for about two months seems to help repair some of the damage to their testicles, even though their blood sugar stays high.

In male rats with diabetes, eating food with 10% sesame oil for about two months seems to boost their testosterone levels, even though their blood sugar stays high.

If you have well-controlled type 2 diabetes, eating two slices of bread with tahini might be just as good for your blood vessel health right after the meal as eating bread with margarine and cheese.

If you have well-managed type 2 diabetes, eating tahini for a meal probably won’t change your blood pressure much after 4 hours — about the same as eating bread with margarine and cheese.

Eating a sandwich with 50 grams of tahini might give people with well-managed type 2 diabetes a temporary boost in blood vessel health within a few hours after eating.

If you have type 2 diabetes and your blood sugar is under good control, eating a sandwich with butter and cheese might raise your blood pressure after a few hours — but swapping that butter and cheese for tahini might not have the same effect.

Eating a meal with 50g of tahini and two slices of bread might help blood vessels work better for a few hours in people with well-managed type 2 diabetes.

Eating tahini with bread might help keep blood pressure steady after meals for people with type 2 diabetes who are managing their blood sugar well — and that could be better for the heart than eating foods high in unhealthy fats.

Sesame seeds contain compounds that can act like estrogen or block estrogen, depending on how much estrogen is already in the body. When estrogen levels are low, these compounds add to it; when estrogen levels are high, they reduce its effects.

Certain compounds from sesame seeds can act like estrogen in breast cancer cells grown in a dish. This effect is stopped by a drug that blocks estrogen receptors, showing these compounds work through those receptors.

Sesamol, a substance found in sesame, can act like a weak estrogen in breast cancer cells, but it's much weaker than the real estrogen hormone.

Eating sesame seeds doesn't seem to change insulin resistance in adults, according to a study that combined results from 8 experiments.

Eating sesame products doesn't change your fasting insulin levels. Researchers combined 8 smaller studies and found no significant effect.

Eating sesame seed products can lower a blood sugar marker called HbA1c by about 0.75% over a few months, which means better blood sugar control.

Eating sesame seed products like sesame oil, sesamin, or tahini for about 6 weeks to 2 months can lower your fasting blood sugar by an average of 21 points, according to a review of 8 studies.

Tahini has special compounds that get into your blood after you eat it, and that's how it helps your heart and metabolism.

Grinding sesame seeds into tahini breaks open the tough outer shell, allowing more of the healthy compounds (lignans) to be absorbed by your body compared to eating whole seeds.

Eating 50 grams of tahini can lower your blood pressure and heart rate, and help your blood vessels work better, all within 4 hours if you are a healthy man.

Eating 50 grams of tahini (a sesame seed paste) during a meal stops the rise in blood pressure that normally happens after eating, which might be good for the heart in people with type 2 diabetes.

Eating 50 grams of tahini (a sesame seed paste) helps lower blood sugar levels in healthy men at 1, 3, and 4 hours after a meal, and the healthy plant compounds in tahini get into the blood and become usable by the body.

Eating sesame seeds might help your body process estrogen in a healthier way, which could help keep your testosterone levels from dropping too low.

Eating tahini can lower your blood sugar after a meal within an hour and also help your body make more testosterone by changing how it processes estrogen, which is something most supplements don't do.