 The shocking benefits of spices. Take one teaspoon of this a day. If you're looking for great ways to get more polyphenols in your diet and you should be, then listen up. It's as simple as making your meals more flavorful by adding some extra seasoning and spices. That's right, just adding a teaspoon of the right spice. You can do a whole lot for your health. Let's take turmeric for example. 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 color, 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 and 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. Joint support has been shown to be useful by taking turmeric and several studies have shown that turmeric boosts mobility and flexibility. But here's the problem with turmeric. I've seen patients throw big pieces of turmeric in their smoothies, cook with turmeric, but turmeric is incredibly poorly absorbed. Curcumin almost doesn't get absorbed from your intestine, but there's a trick. If you add black pepper to turmeric, there's a component in black pepper called bioparen and bioparen escorts curcumin across the intestinal wall. So interestingly enough, there are some studies that I've reported in the longevity paradox of curry eaters. People who eat curry at least once a week have a 90% reduction in Alzheimer's compared to people who don't eat curry. Well, what's with that? Interestingly enough, curry powder contains both turmeric and black pepper. So the turmeric is absorbed with the help of the black pepper. The curcumin gets into your brain and reduces neuroinflammation. And in humans who eat curry once a week, much, much, much lower dementia than people who don't eat curry. Why? Because these spices are really the spice of life. And if nothing else, they're the spice of your brain's life. And I kind of like my brain. 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 yourselves, 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, cloves are the highest. Turns out that in the Middle Ages, during spice trade, cloves 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 bioparent that actually helps you absorb the polyphenols in spices. So it was a win-win proposition. Now, there's a lot of other interesting sources of polyphenols in your spice counter. Dried peppermint. Peppermint is part of the basil family. And the more peppermint containing basil containing spices you eat, every day, the better. One surprising one, which is very high in polyphenols, is star anise. And star anise is a great flavoring for just about anything you want to eat. Finally, cocoa powder, non-dutched process, non-alcoholic cocoa powder, is loaded with polyphenols. And I bet you've got some cocoa powder in the pantry right now. All of these polyphenols, the more we can get them into you, the more you'll protect your mitochondria, the more you'll uncouple your mitochondria, and the longer your health span. Another interesting spice that also has benefits is ginger. Now, ginger is renowned for helping with nausea. Now, although ginger is a bit lower in polyphenols, it's actually a very potent mitochondrial uncoupler and a mitogenesis promoter. But does it really help with nausea? Well, as many of you know, I look at food sensitivities for a great number of my patients with leaky gut and autoimmune disease. And surprisingly, ginger, even though it's known for helping with nausea, frequently shows up as a troublemaker for people having antibodies, IgG antibodies, to ginger. So don't necessarily be afraid of ginger. But if you're doing a lot of ginger tea, if you're adding a lot of ginger to your smoothies or to your cooking, and you still have issues with bloating, with gas, with irritable bowel, try taking ginger out of your diet for a while. And let's see what happened. Okay, one of my favorite spices, again, a huge spice in the middle age spice trade was cinnamon. Numerous human studies have confirmed that cinnamon can lower fasting blood sugar levels by anywhere from 10% to 30%. Why? Well, cinnamon again is loaded with polyphenols. In studies with people with type two diabetes, one gram of cinnamon or about a half a teaspoon of cinnamon per day has been shown to support healthy blood sugar levels. In fact, numerous studies show that adding cinnamon to your coffee in the morning will block the invariable rise of blood sugar following consuming a cup of coffee. Maybe that's why the Viennese are famous for putting cinnamon in your coffee. And maybe that's why at almost every coffee shop you go into, there is a cinnamon shaker. And don't be afraid of adding cinnamon to your coffee. Why not add a teaspoon of it to your coconut milk latte? Or if you're going to eat starches or carbohydrates, why not sprinkle them with cinnamon? So for instance, if you're going to have a sweet potato, sprinkle it with cinnamon. If you're going to have an in season crispy pear like a Danju pear, put cinnamon on it. One of the interesting things about cinnamon is that cinnamon tricks your brain into thinking your food is sweeter than it is. So you'll actually enjoy a lot of your less sweet foods and maybe not eat as much of them by putting cinnamon on your food. So next time you're going to have a sweet potato, do this trick. Sprinkle it with cinnamon. Better yet, get out clothes, grind your clothes, sprinkle it with clothes and cinnamon and see if you don't enjoy it more and see if you're not satisfied earlier with less food. I think it goes a long way. Just remember the spice trade of the Middle Ages was a drug trade. People paid exorbitant amount of money for spices and people risked their lives to get these spices because they were such potent health promoting drugs. And believe me, what we need right now is not more pharmaceutical drugs. We need health promoting spices. Last but not least chili. And no, I'm not talking about red pepper flakes. Remember red pepper flakes came about because the seeds and the peels were thrown away by traditional cultures before they ate the flesh of a chili or before they ground the flesh of the chili up into chili powder. It was the discharge from traditional cultures that led to chili flakes on your pizza. Just remember the peel and seeds have the lectins. So a lot of traditional cultures use chili in the cooking process. They take the whole chilies, cook with it, then throw the chili away. They get the benefit, the polyphenols, the capsicum from the chili, but not the discharge. The third way that people do, besides peeling and de-seeding their chilies and then drying them into chili powder, is they ferment their chilies. And traditionally, most chili flavorings, most chili sauces were prepared by fermentation. So for instance, Tabasco sauce is fermented chilies. Fermentation breaks down the lectins. So have your chilies, but eat them the right way. Either use them whole to flavor your food, but don't eat them. Either peel and de-seed them, then grind them up or buy ground up chili powder. I buy my chili powder, has chili from New Mexico, multiple sources, and use it that way. For the third way, use a hot sauce that has been traditionally fermented and you'll be very safe. Now, chili has great benefits. Studies show that the capsicum in chili is a tremendous curb of appetite and people in general who eat chilies and capsicum, or use chili powder, way less than people who don't eat chilies. Plus, chili actually has beneficial effects on joint health and, believe it or not, cardiovascular health. And I take a supplement every day with chili powder to help my vascular system. So, however you want to get chilies in, just get them in the right way and you'll see the benefits. Finally, ever notice that when you eat something spicy, like has chili in it, that you begin to sweat. That's because the chilies are uncoupling your mitochondria and you produce heat from that uncoupling. And that, as you know, if you read the last book, Unlocking the Keto Code, is one of the huge benefits of eating polyphenols and you're seeing it in dramatic fashion whenever you're having spicy food. I think you're gonna love this one. Believe it or not, up until about 30 years ago, whole wheat bread was not on the table.