Are There Health Benefits to Turmeric?
What is Turmeric?
Turmeric is a spice actually a member of the ginger family. It comes from the plant Curcuma longs which grows primarily in India and Southeastern Asian.
It has been around for centuries and was first used in ancient Asian cultures as a healing aid.
It’s main active ingredient that provides the health benefits is Curcumin
What is Curcumin and What Does It Do?
It’s the compound responsible for giving Turmeric its golden color famously naming it as the "golden spice."
Curcumin is what makes Turmeric known as a functional food defined by Mayo Clinic as:
“Foods that have a POTENTIALLY positive effect on health BEYOND basic nutritional benefits."
Is There Validity to Curcumin in Turmeric? What the Science Says..
The problem with Curcumin coming through Turmeric is that it has poor bioavailability
Bioavailability = the actual percentage that something you take in can be used by your body.
For example, if something has a 10% bioavailability and you take 100 mg of it, that means your body will only actually be able to use 10 mg
This means that that you have to eat A LOT of Turmeric in order to get the perceived health benefits
We'll talk about a way to potentially get around this shortly
Curcumin has been federally funded for research through the national center for complementary and integrative health, however, no support has been found for Curcumin/Turmeric as a medical treatment BY ITSELF to any specific form of disease.
So, what has been found? The best research out there demonstrates Turmeric as having two major properties:
Anti-oxidant
Anti inflammatory
I think it’s important to mention as well that there’s a specific study about Turmeric showing reduction and in some cases reversal of specific Alzheimer Disease features such as amyloid pathology and associated neurotoxiciy.
Basically.. it was shown to help stop the progression of Alzheimer Disease
Try it yourself?
In order to get the full effect of Turmeric, try combining it with black pepper. This will INCREASE that bioavailability we talked about earlier.
How much to take?
No real set in stone amount observed in studies consistently
2g of Turmeric combined with 20 mg of Piperine (the active ingredient in black pepper)
20 mg of black pepper is just a pinch!
Try this for two weeks and see if you notice any differences!
