Just One Thing - Try Some Turmeric Facts By Dr Michael Mosley

wow we would all like some quick and simple ways to improve our health but we're inundated with often conflicting advice so if you were going to try just one thing to improve your mental and physical well-being what should it be perhaps the martial art of taichi to improve your immune system maybe a few nuts to slow aging or how about cleaning your teeth to give your brain a boost I'm Dr Michael Mosley and this is just one thing where each episode we'll explore one thing you can start doing today to improve your health or life in ways you might not [Music] expect it's lunch time and I'm throwing together a vegetarian Carry I've got the onions here and now they go into the frying pan you can hear them Sizzle away leave that for a moment and now to the most important part I'm about to add in something that could boost my mood and my memory and it may even reduce inflammation I'm adding turmeric you can buy it fresh or as a dried spice which is what I'm using or even take it as a supplement okay I think the onions are looking rather golden now and time to add in the turmeric powder wow it's got a wonderfully bright coloro and quite a strong Aroma as well now ter is a close relative of Ginger and if you buy it fresh it has a similar knobbly root light look but inside it's this vibrant yellow orange the color comes from a substance within it called kumin and that's the compound scientists think is the key to turmeric benefits for the brain and body turmeric has been widely used for Millennia in many parts of the world especially in Southeast Asia not just for cooking but also as medicine and there is new research showing it could be especially beneficial for some types of pain so is this something you'd like to use more I'm speaking to Yushi an office worker let's see if spicing up her life with turmeric is just one thing she'd like to do hi there hello now first of all do you enjoy cooking I do enjoy cooking but I wish I had a bit more time to try different recipes right and have you uh ever cooked with turmeric before I haven't actually I've been wanting to incorporate more spices in my cooking turmeric as you may well know is widely used in curry but it's also delicious in scrambled eggs soups and yogurts or a turmeric pancake what I want you to do is to add one teaspoon a day to your cooking could be breakfast lunch or supper however you want to do it uh but one teaspoon a day do you think you can manage that that sounds okay yeah I'm definitely up for giving it a go be aware that it is a very bright yellow color and it can stain that sounds good thanks for the heads up I've asked Yushi to spice things up with turmeric because this golden hued powder not only adds color and flavoring to food it's also been linked to some surprising Health claims from boosting attention and working memory to improving asthma and ecma the link between turmeric and health is nothing new it's been used in ancient AIC medicine for thousands of years to alleviate liver problems and digestive ailment over the last couple of decades or so scientific research into turmeric and in particular into its active ingredient kirkin has exploded with lots of studies exploring the health effects of this golden spice and some of the findings have been impressive let's start with the brain a Singaporean study in 2022 following 2,700 older people for nearly 5 years found those who ate a lot of turmeric Rich curries like Kaa kept their brains in better shape when measured for things like working memory and problem solving than those who didn't the authors suggest that it's the kumin which is a polyphenol in the turmeric which is responsible for these positive effects now a big problem with circumin is that normally very little of it gets absorbed so the scientist think that one of the reasons why they saw such good results in their study is because when you consume curcumin with fat and certain spices this helped your body to absorb more of it it's a great excuse to add it to Curry and if you don't fancy Curry then you might consider a curcumine supplement in an Australian study where they gave curcumin in pill form to 80 older individuals they found that compared to Placebo taking the supplements improved working memory and reduced fatigue one way it might be working is by reducing inflammation in a recent Japanese study where overweight but otherwise healthy participants were randomly allocated to Placebo or curcumin extract they found those taking the supplements had lower levels of an inflammatory marker in the blood called C reactive protein and as we'll discover in a moment it appears teric can also relieve pain I'll be delving into that with an expert shortly but first let's check in with Yushi the first recipe I tried was the chicken Cora and The Taste was really good overall it was a nice bright yellow color it did stain things The Wooden Spoon that I use for cooking is now just permanently yellow the challenges really inspired me to be a bit more adventurous with the food that I make I'm looking forward to the rest of the week we'll catch up with Yushi at the end of the week and see if she can find some tasty ways to incorporate turmeric into her diet but now to get the low down on turmeric I'm speaking to Dr Benny Anthony from the men Institute of Medical Research at the University of Tasmania in Australia good day good day Michael now what would you say are the main benefits of turmeric turmeric has been used for centuries in ayurvedic medicine that is a traditional Indian medicine as well as traditional Chinese medicine but uh only recently uh people have identified the AC component such as the corcumin so turmeric is been mainly known as an anti-inflammatory agent it is also known to be an antioxidant therefore it can be useful for chronic conditions it's also it's got antifungal properties and a wound healing properties so what not it's got many properties now I know you have done clinical trials looking at the benefits of using turmeric in arthritis can you tell me about that so this clinical trial uh involved 70 patients so U we selected patients based on pain as well as based on the joint inflammation so we randomized 35 people into placebo group and 35 people into the active group who received the turmeric extract and then we followed these patients over 12 weeks and we found that the participants who were taking the turmeric extracts had relief in pain compared to the placebo group obviously both Placebo and treatment group both reduce the knee pain but the treatment group had a further reduction compared to placebo group right but we know the placebo effect is very powerful particularly in pain so oddly enough you would actually have to be quite impressive to um outdo the placebo in this context and did it affect the amount of pain medication they were taking yeah that's one of the interesting or secondary outcomes of this trial was that there was a reduction in the number of medications which they were taking for their knee pain so how does turmeric compare to a standard painkiller like ibuprofen in our trial we did not really compare turmeric extract with a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug however uh we can indirectly compare the effect size of the treatment that means we found a modest effect of the treatment compared to Placebo and similarly the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as the ibuprofen have got only a modest effect non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs such as the ibuprofen seems to have a lot of contraindication that means they cannot be taken in older patients and uh a lot of these drugs have more severe Adverse Events such as the gastrointesinal bleeding or cardiovascular events so compared to the non-steroid anti-inflamm drugs you know there seems to be no adverse event for turmeric extract right did you also see an anti-inflammatory effect did they they actually have less inflammation in the joint we did not find a significant difference in local inflammation and we also tested whether the turmeric consumption led to a reduction in the inflammatory markers in the bloodstream and we did not find a significant effect of uh these biomarkers uh because of the treatment of a turmeric so it's possible there is something else going on that turmeric is not necessarily acting by reducing inflammation what do you think that something else might be so there is possibly other mechanisms that could have explained the reduction in pain some studies suggest that turmeric might have an effect in the gut brain axis that turmeric extracts especially the cumin can actually improve certain type of bacterial colony which reduce the inflammation so there is plenty of other evidence to say that turmeric can reduce inflammation in a systemic level and which is evidenced in the biomarkers as well okay now you are obviously focusing on osteoarthritis which is an inflammatory condition in the knee do you think it could be beneficial for other types of pain so what we have found that it's been effective for acute pain as well it's not just uh for the chronic conditions as well but it's for a normal healthy people it can be uh used to reduce the pain although still needs more research in this area if people do want to boost their turmeric consumption what's the best way of doing so so if people want to uh increase the active component in the turmeric such as the corcumin in their body the best way to uh do it is to combine it with some pepper because piperin seems to increase the bioavailability that means the increased absorption of corcumin in the body the other option is fatty food seems to increase the bu availability of camine obviously I've got an Indian Heritage so I follow some of the Indian cousin so I pour oil first and then I put turmeric powder in it so it's good for Taste and it's going to increase the bi avalability right that's the science now let's check in one more time with Yushi to see how she's getting on with turmeric it's the end of the week the turmeric ended up tasting a lot nicer than I expected and I surprised myself with the range of different dishes I was able to incorporate turmeric into the turmeric pancakes were really delicious the turmeric gave the pancakes a really warm flavor it worked quite well with Savory toppings I'll definitely be making the curry again overall I found the challenge a great success I really enjoyed [Music] it I'm really glad to hear that Yushi has enjoyed her Challenge and I've been adding more turmeric to my diet and I've discovered something novel which which I do enjoy and that is having it as a latte now I've got some uh milk here and I'm going to add it to my milk frother there we go nice and fro up I'm adding a nice teaspoon of turmeric and then giving it a good old stir and it's certainly a wonderfully orange color and the advantage of using milk is the fat means that I'm going to absorb more of the good stuff as well and it's also delicious so if you're looking for an excuse to have a delicious hot drink or perhaps that Curry you've been craving here it is add in some termeric it could boost your brain and take away your pain so that's it it's just one thing you can incorporate into your daily routine which really could benefit your body and life if you want to hear more of the series why not subscribe on BBC sounds on the next episode of just one thing the healing power of the pen how a technique