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Turmeric Combines Experience + Evidence

Turmeric is a very popular spice used in Indian cooking- it is what gives curry its distinctive yellow color. The yellow color can also cause staining in clothes that is practically impossible to get rid of! Turmeric is also one of the oldest medicinal herbs and extensively used in Ayurvedic medicine. It is well known in India for its antiseptic and anti-inflammatory effects. Commonly referred to as the Golden Spice, turmeric (or haldi in India) is said to have many medicinal properties including strengthening energy and improving blood circulation, and is used to treat a variety of ailments like asthma, bronchitis, arthritis, sprains, and swelling. In fact, whenever I suffered a minor injury, the first thing my mom applied on my wound was a paste made from turmeric (which is found in every Indian kitchen even in America, and used in almost every traditional Indian dish). I grew up rolling my eyes at one of the most common household remedies for most Indians.🙄

Turmeric, also known as haldi

A few years ago, the west started paying attention to turmeric and it soon became the darling of new-age medicine. Turmeric also became the hottest food trend in America with everything from Golden milk to turmeric chai latte becoming a craze with millennials. It became labeled a superfood offering multiple health benefits from respiratory to digestive to anti-aging. 

Turmeric Latte drink

Once turmeric started gaining popularity in the west, it was only natural for chemists to start looking at it in the lab. Turns out the experiential learning that made turmeric popular in India wasn't inaccurate at all! Modern research discovered that the main ingredient of turmeric, curcumin, is a strong antioxidant that blocks free radicals (curcumin is also the ingredient that is responsible for giving turmeric its characteristic yellow color). Curcumin also blocks NF-kB, a molecule that travels into the cell nuclei and turns on genes related to inflammation. By blocking NF-kB which is known to play a major role in many chronic diseases, turmeric (or curcumin) acts as a powerful anti-inflammatory agent, making it an effective medicine for arthritis and swelling! The antioxidants in it also help with the high rate of oxidative metabolic activity that occurs in brain activity, thus helping combat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and aging. Turmeric has also shown evidence of cancer-fighting ability- in lab and animal studies, turmeric was seen to stop the growth of tumor cells and enhance the effect of detoxifying enzymes, mainly because of its antioxidants.

Chemical structure of Curcumin


All in all, I think turmeric is a shining example of the successful combination of experience and evidence-based medicine. 


Sources:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/top-10-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-turmeric
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664031/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372981/ 
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19594223/
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