Turmeric – spice or medicinal plant?
Turmeric is known by many as a spice. For most people it is on the shelf and is used, for example, with meat dishes. However, not everyone knows that turmeric can also serve as a support for a healthy body.
Yet turmeric has been known in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine for centuries.
Wonder root and spice from Asia
Turmeric grows mainly in India and Indonesia and looks at first glance like reeds. However, the turmeric rhizome – i.e. the sprout axis system – is strongly reminiscent of ginger.
However, at the latest when you cut it open, you can see the difference: the turmeric root shines in a bright red-orange color. Early on, however, the health potential of turmeric was also discovered in our country.
Thus, for several decades, researchers have been trying to unlock its secrets.
All-rounder turmeric?
At the present time, there are numerous studies on the various effects of turmeric. Thus the turmeric is supposed to have provided in some investigations for pain relief or to have inhibited also inflammations.
Even with common painkillers its effect is partly compared. But also diabetes, heart disease and rheumatism should be able to be combated.
The latest news in 2018 came from London, where a 67-year-old woman suffering from cancer took curcumin after numerous chemotherapies and other treatments with no effect.
Curcumin is the dye that gives turmeric its bright orange color, but is also the subject of many medical studies.
The British woman fought blood cancer for years, but only with the intake of 8g curcumin daily she could stop the disease.
This is the first case documented so far where a cancer patient, after many years of struggle, stopped all treatments and successfully relied on curcumin.
An astonishing result, which was even published in the “British Medical Journal”.
Not all turmeric is the same
An ingestion of the spice is hardly possible for such results. Because the commercial curcuma spice contains only 2% curcumin.
While ginger root can be found in almost every store, turmeric is hardly available as a fresh product on the market.
Thus also the consumption of a fresh Kurkumas is hardly possible. However, there are already numerous manufacturers who offer turmeric as a preparation.
Unfortunately, curcumin has the property of being fat soluble. This means that the substance hardly passes through the intestinal membrane and thus cannot be processed by the body. As a result, curcumin is excreted again unused. So it has a low bioavailability.
Many curcumin manufacturers try to compensate for this with piperine – a substance from pepper – because this increases the bioavailability. Unfortunately only minimally: by a factor of 20.
In addition, piperine can have side effects on the gastrointestinal tract. Especially people with an irritable bowel are affected.
The latest research has brought to light an alternative to increase bioavailability: the micelle. The test winner among the turmeric capsules uses this formulation and increases the absorption possibility by 185 times.
The curcumin gets a nature-identical micelle form and can thus easily penetrate the intestinal membrane and be processed by the body.
Research on the trail of curcuma
Turmeric is certainly not a panacea. But the research speaks for itself, so it’s safe to assume that Asians can’t be all that wrong about using turmeric for healing purposes for centuries.
