Top 10 Real Health Benefits of Curcuma (Turmeric)
Revealed: 10 proven health benefits of curcuma longa!
Learn why you should be adding turmeric to your diet on a daily basis and enjoying a healthier outlook.
Discover how the often dubbed "the healthiest spice on Earth" can help to improve the function of joints, heart, brain, muscles and immune system and more besides.
Turmeric gives curry its distinctive yellow color and comes from the dried and powdered root of the Curcuma Longa plant.
It can be used in a wide range of dishes to enhance the color and flavor of the food, while making a healthy contribution to a person's diet in more ways than many people know.
This evidence-based article highlights the top 10 benefits to health that come from including this amazing spice in your daily diet!
- Powerful Medicinal Properties
- Powerful Antioxidant
- Natural Anti-Inflammatory
- Helps Prevent and Even Treat Cancer
- Lowers Heart Disease Risk
- Improves Brain Function and Lowers Risk of Brain Diseases
- Preventing and Treating Alzheimer's Disease
- Delay the Aging Process
- Arthritis Treatment
- Fights Depression
Let's expand on those points now:
1. Powerful Medicinal Properties
This spice has been in constant use as a culinary additive and medicinal herb in India as well as other Asian countries for millennia.
Medical science has uncovered medicinal and health-giving compounds in turmeric called curcuminoids, the most important and main active ingredient being curcumin.
Curcumin has been shown to have powerful anti-inflammatory properties as well as being a powerful antioxidant.
However, by weight curcumin only makes up around 3% of the content of turmeric root, so to get the full benefit you'd need to take a higher dose extract.
Curcumin is not easily absorbed into the bloodstream on its own. Including some black pepper, which contains an absorption enhancing substance called piperine can increase absorption by around 2000%.
2. Powerful Antioxidant
Curcumin acts as a powerful antioxidant, neutralizing free radicals. It also stimulates the body's own naturally produced antioxidant enzymes.
Free radicals are highly reactive molecules that are known to cause oxidative damage to the body's cells. They react with important organic substances including fatty acids, proteins and DNA.
Physical aging along with many diseases are believed to be linked to this damage that curcumin helps to prevent.
3. Natural Anti-Inflammatory
Inflammation is a bodily defense mechanism that helps the body to fight foreign invaders helping to repair damage.
While acute (short-term) inflammation is generally beneficial, it becomes a problem when chronic (long-term).
In this state it can actually turn against the body's own tissues, as is all too well known among rheumatoid arthritis sufferers.
Chronic, low-level inflammation is believed to play a major role in many chronic diseases.
These include cancer, heart disease, metabolic syndrome and various degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
Curcumin is able to inhibit many of the molecules known to cause inflammation. It targets the inflammatory pathway at the molecular level at a number of steps.
It blocks the molecule NF-kappaB which travels into the nuclei of cells where it activates genes related to inflammation. It is believed to be a common denominator in many chronic diseases.
Curcumin is strongly anti-inflammatory and several studies have shown it to match the effectiveness of some common anti-inflammatory drugs (but without any side effects).
4. Helps Prevent and Even Treat Cancer
There are a number of different forms of cancer although these share a number of commonalities. Curcumin supplementation appears to affect some of these by affecting cancer cell growth, development and spread right down to the molecular level with an anticancer effect.
Studies have shown that curcumin can reduce the growth of new blood vessels in tumors (angiogenesis), the spread of cancer (metastasis) and contribute to the death of cancerous cells.
While more tests need to be conducted to provide more concrete proof that high-dose curcumin (plus an absorption enhancer such as pepper) can help treat cancer in humans, there is evidence it may help prevent cancer from occurring initially.
This is especially so in cases of digestive system related cancers (such as colorectal cancer). However, more tests need to be performed but it does look promising.
5. Lowers Heart Disease Risk
Heart disease is well known as the world's biggest killer!
Researchers have studied for decades and have learned much about its causes and the various contributors to its manifestation.
One of those contributors is endothelial dysfunction, a major driver of heart disease, involving the endothelium's inability to regulate blood pressure, blood clotting and other factors.
Several studies suggest that endothelial function is improved by curcumin.
It also reduces inflammation and oxidation; important factors in heart disease.
6. Improves Brain Function and Lowers Risk of Brain Diseases
Curcumin has been shown to boost brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is linked to improved brain function while lowering the risk of certain diseases of the brain from developing.
Overturning early beliefs, we now know that neurons are able to divide and multiply after early childhood.
Neurons are able to form new connections and multiply and increase in number in certain areas of the brain.
Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), a type of growth hormone that functions in the brain is one of the main drivers of this process.
Decreased levels of this hormone are linked to many common brain disorders including depression and Alzheimer's disease.
Curcumin is known to be able to increase levels of BDNF in the brain, effectively delaying or even reversing a number of brain diseases along with age-related brain function decrease.
It is also believed it can help improve memory and even raise intelligence, given its effects on BDNF levels. More tests need to be carried out in this area.
7. Preventing and Treating Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease is the world's leading neurodegenerative disease and a leading cause of dementia, with no known effective treatment as yet.
Prevention is the best defense we have at the moment and this is where curcumin comes in, thanks to its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier.
Inflammation and oxidative damage are known to play a role in the appearance of Alzheimer's disease. It is known that curcumin can reduce their effects.
A key feature of Alzheimer's is a build-up of Amyloid plaques. Studies show that these plaques can be cleared by curcumin. However, more studies need to be conducted to ascertain if curcumin really can slow or even reverse the progression of this disease.
8. Delay the Aging Process
Curcumin ability to help prevent heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's provides obvious benefits for slowing the aging process and increasing longevity.
Chronic inflammation and oxidation are also believed to promote more rapid aging, so by countering them, curcumin may be much more than a disease prevention agent.
It's no wonder that curcumin is very popular as an anti-aging supplement!
9. Arthritis Treatment
Rheumatoid arthritis is an all-too common disorder characterized by inflamed joints.
Since curcumin is a potent anti-inflammatory, there is a lot of evidence it can help reduce the swelling in the joints that typifies many forms of arthritis.
Many studies show that curcumin can be effective at helping to treat symptoms of arthritis, in some cases proving to be more effective than pharmaceutical anti-inflammatory drugs.
10. Fights Depression
According to some studies, curcumin can be effective as an antidepressant.
Depression is linked to reduced levels of BNDF (see above) along with a shrinking hippocampus. This is an area in the brain related to learning and memory.
Some of these changes can be effectively reversed as curcumin boosts BNDF levels. There is also some evidence that the brain neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine can be boosted by curcumin.
What Next?
While it can be beneficial to general health to include turmeric in your daily diet, to get the full effects of curcumin, this substance needs to be taken as a high dose extract as is found in a number of supplements.
It also needs to be taken with an absorption assist such as black pepper for the body to be able to fully absorb the substance and obtain the best use from it.
Some supplements are produced that combine the two along with additional herbal ingredients to provide a full dose, powerful natural healing agent.
One of the best of these currently available is Curcumin 2000 Defense which can be purchased direct from the manufacturer online. See the promotion image banner below and click for details.
