 Historians from around the world have produced evidence to show that apparently all primitive peoples used herbs, often in a sophisticated way. Quinein from Chikonobarque was used to treat the symptoms of malaria long before the disease was identified. And the wrong gradients of a common aspirin tablet have been a popular painkiller for far longer than we have had access to tablet-making machinery. Indeed, today, many pharmacological classes of drugs include a natural product prototype, which we originally discovered through the study of traditional cures and folk knowledge of indigenous people. There's a plant in South Asia called Atatoda. Adu means goat, and Toda means not touch, because it's so bitter even the goats won't eat it. But it has compounds that help open one's airways, and as such, Atatoda tea has been used traditionally to treat asthma, where the leaves are steeped with black peppercorns. That sounds kind of gross to me, and why would they do that? Because they're smart. Back in 1928, scientists discovered what the people evidently already knew, which was that adding pepper increased the anti-asmatic properties of the leaves. Black pepper alone didn't work, it was the combination, and now we know why. Just like approximately 5% of the spiced turmeric is this active compound called curcumin, about 5% of black pepper by weight is this compound called piperine. Curcumin is responsible for the yellow color of turmeric, and piperine for the pungent flavor of pepper, and it's a potent inhibitor of drug metabolism. One of the ways our liver gets rid of foreign substances is by making them water soluble so they can be more easily excreted. But this black pepper molecule inhibits that process, and it doesn't take much. If you give people a bunch of turmeric curcumin, within an hour you can see a little bump in the level in their bloodstream. The reason we don't see more is that our liver is actively trying to get rid of it. But what if you suppress that process by taking just a quarter teaspoons worth of black pepper? Then you see curcumin levels like this. In the bloodstream. Same amount of curcumin consumed, but the bioavailability shoots up 2,000%. Even just a little pinch of pepper, one twentieth of a teaspoon, can significantly boost levels. And guess what a common ingredient in curry powder is besides turmeric? Black pepper. Another way to boost the absorption of curcumin is to consume it as the whole food, turmeric root, fresh or dried and powdered as turmeric, as natural oils found in turmeric root and turmeric powder can enhance the bioavailability of curcumin, 7 to 8-fold. When eaten with fat, curcumin can be directly absorbed into the bloodstream through the lymphatic system, thereby in part kind of bypassing the liver. And how was it prepared in India? With fat and black pepper. Amazing how they could figure that out without double-blind trials, though maybe it just tasted good and was a coincidence. Their traditional knowledge certainly failed them with ghee, though, which is practically pure butter fad, which may explain their relatively high rates of heart disease, despite all their turmeric.