 The insane benefits of turmeric. Now if you've ever had a curry dish at an Indian restaurant you probably consumed turmeric. It's the classic spice that gives curry its yellowish orange color and it's been around for thousands of years. Not only does turmeric taste great but it's also a nutritional powerhouse. Scientists still uncover benefit of turmeric every year and it's pretty impressive considering how long it's been around. It's a relative of ginger and turmeric has been used in both Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine for centuries. For those of you who don't know Ayurvedic medicine is one of the world's oldest holistic medical systems that originated in India. Now turmeric's main ingredient is curcumin. Now the benefits of curcumin it's a potent polyphenol and you've heard me talk time and time again about the benefits of polyphenols but we're uncovering more about how polyphenols work and in particular the polyphenol that curcumin is. First of all you could take a big hunk of turmeric that you bought at the grocery store and throw it in your smoothie and quite frankly it's not going to do much of anything for you because like most polyphenols turmeric is horribly absorbed from our gastrointestinal tract so please don't waste your money on turmeric root unless you're just looking for the flavor that turmeric root imparts that's okay but turmeric by itself curcumin by itself isn't going to give you the benefits you want from that polyphenol unless you take certain additional steps. Now once you make the polyphenol curcumin available by having your gut bacteria work on it or by taking a compound that's present in black pepper called bioparen it's much more readily absorbed. Now it's an amazing neuro regenerative compound in fact a study done in Singapore a few years ago showed that people who ate curry once per week had a 90% reduction in dimension compared to people who didn't eat curry so turmeric's in curry but guess what another ingredient in curry is if you guess black pepper you're right so how did the ancients know that they had to combine these ingredients they knew how did apocrates know 2,500 years ago that all disease begins in the gut he knew it's taken us 2,500 years to catch up with him but it's fascinating to me that black pepper and turmeric are two of the main components in curry and curry is great for your brain turmeric probably inhibits lipid peroxidation and if you listen to me talk about cholesterol in general cholesterol is not bad for you cholesterol is not interested in clogging up your blood vessels and sticking to your blood vessels unless it's oxidized unless it's rusty or rancid and if it's rusty or rancid then it has the potential to stick to your blood vessels and turmeric curcumin is one of those polyphenols that limits peroxidation of cholesterol there's some interesting studies about joint pain being lessened by turmeric and as I mentioned preventing neurodegeneration is a wonderful thing also curcumin has some very interesting anti-cancer properties this has been studied actually extensively at the University of South Florida Tampa at Tampa General Hospital in people undergoing resection for pancreatic cancer some groups were given large dose turmeric before the operation other groups were given a placebo placebo the turmeric group had reduced amount of cancer at the time of resection turmeric actually inhibits cancer growth in multiple studies so have your turmeric have your curry now a word of warning particularly to my female listeners several of my female patients notice bowel issues changes in their bowels following turmeric consumption so if you notice adding turmeric in the form of a capsule or in powders is changing your bowels first of all give it a little while turmeric actually changes the microbiome and those changes sometimes appear as changes in bowel movements but if you are still bothered by it's not essential for your health now there's a very interesting study speaking of women of looking at the effect of curcumin on bdnf brain-derived neurotrophic factor with women with pms so the participants were randomly assigned to a placebo or the curcumin groups each group received two capsules daily for seven days before menstruation and for three days after menstruation for three successive menstrual cycles the curcumin group the first second and third cycles after the interventions bdnf went up significantly compared to the placebo group and the mean scores of pms symptoms were significantly less in the curcumin group than the placebo group so if you've got pms if you want to help your brain during that premenstrual period where you notice a difference in your brain function give curcumin a try and it's powerful stuff now the good news is it's readily available and easy to incorporate into any diet so you'll find it in powder form you'll find it in capsule form you'll find it in fluid extracts but word to the wise and less proven otherwise make sure that you see a bioavailability profile of the capsule you're going to buy or at the very least look at bioparin as one of the ingredients in the label there are other ways to absorb curcumin using nanoencapsulation that i like a lot but in general look for the word bioparin or look for an actual curve of bioavailability of the supplement you're going to buy the last thing is you can add turmeric to any dish make it much more interesting in flavor it adds a wonderful color you can put it into a stir fry you can put it in a coconut milk turmeric latte but do me a favor sprinkle in a little black pepper wherever you put it and you'll boost the uptake of curcumin turmeric is big right now everybody wants turmeric lattes turmeric smoothies turmeric everything why well the active ingredient in turmeric that root that looks a lot like ginger except it's orange colored curcumin can actually help in the management of oxidative and inflammatory conditions in fact strangely enough these compounds these antioxidant compounds that we eat and we think about them as anti-inflammatory compounds unfortunately most of these don't cross the blood brain barrier turmeric is actually one of the few exceptions we know that turmeric does cross the blood brain barrier why is that important well if you like the concept that brain health dementia parkinson's Alzheimer's is directly related to neuro inflammation inflammation of our neurons then turmeric with its ability to cross the blood brain barrier may be a winner in a winning spice now turmeric has also been shown to boost energy levels it does that by actually boosting mitochondrial function and in fact can repair mitochondria by uncoupling mitochondria how about another one that most people really only think of about once a year and that's at Easter and that happens to be clothes clothes interestingly enough are the have the highest polyphenol content of any spice now I've written and spoken about polyphenols throughout my career real briefly polyphenols are produced by plants in both their leaves and their fruit and their seeds to protect the leaves fruit and seeds from hostile environments from sunlight from predation and these polyphenols we now know protect the plant by uncoupling their mitochondria simplistically saying tell the mitochondria don't work so hard don't damage your cells don't get affected by oxidative stress and it's called mitochondrial uncoupling when we eat the polyphenols that are very very high in spices two things happen number one recent research shows that polyphenols are one of the preferred prebiotic fibers of our gut microbiome our gut bacteria that means the more polyphenols we eat in this case in spices the more our gut buddies the good guys improve their diversity improve their lives the second thing we now know is that polyphenols like I mentioned curcumin are very poorly absorbed but our gut microbiome can actually eat them and then turn those polyphenols into absorbable compounds and when those polyphenols reach our mitochondria they have the same effect on our mitochondria that they were used for by the plant to protect its mitochondria and that is they uncouple our mitochondria now uncoupling mitochondria if nothing else actually helps you lose weight and it's no surprise that people with diets high in polyphenols are actually in general much thinner than people who have diets that are very low in polyphenols and we'll talk about that a little bit further now in terms of spices clothes are the highest it turns out that in the middle ages during spice trade clothes were the second most popular spice and the highest price spice behind saffron the number one spice was black pepper and among other reasons black pepper contains that compound bioparen that actually helps you absorb the polyphenols in spices so it was a win-win proposition I think you're gonna love this one two and a half eggs meet your entire protein needs every single day