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Something in Turmeric could reverse Alzheimer's dementia

5/8/2012

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Last weekend I gave a talk titled "PET Imaging of Alzheimer's Dementia." (To the left is a picture of a patient who did not develop Alzheimer's compared with another patient who did, as detected by a special PET agent developed at UCLA.) 

After my talk, I became curious and reviewed the literature on whether curcumin (the bioactive component of turmeric, used in day-to-day cooking and Ayurvedic medicine for centuries) could protect against this horrible disease where the sufferer is robbed of memory, feelings and personality. This is a disease where the suffering is just as horrible for the people taking care of the patient. And while there's one FDA-approved medication (Aricept) that seems to slow down progression by about 9 months, there is none that reverse the disease.

So I was excited to read the research on on mice models of Alzheimer's, which tell of curcumin actually reversing one of two likely causes. The current consensus is that the two causes of Alzheimer's dementia are (1) increased production and accumulation of a protein named Amyloid-beta 42 around brain cells, and (2) accumulation of another protein named tau tangles inside brain cells, both of which evoke an inflammatory response leading to the eventual death of these brain cells. 

Gary Cole, Ph.D., a UCLA researcher, has shown in vitro experiments (such as in petri dishes in the lab) and in mice that curcumin has 3 major effects that appear to fight the Amyloid cause of Alzheimer's: it (a) breaks down Amyloid-beta so that it doesn't accumulate, (b) prevents the protein from forming, and (c) helps reduce how much cholesterol is available in the brain. 


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Another study shows why spices are the best medicine

3/12/2012

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A new study from Penn State researcher Dr. West and her team suggests a combination of spices can reduce how much triglycerides your body absorbs from a high-fat meal and how much insulin is released in response to a carb-rich mel, which would be good news.

It's why the study is being greeted with a lot of excitement. For instance, see
this NPR story on the research -- which is where the picture comes from. Here's a link to the study.

The study design briefly: 6 overweight but otherwise healthy men were given two meals 1 week apart. The first meal was a "control meal" made of a chicken and white rice dish, cheese bread, and dessert biscuit. The second meal was the "experimental meal" of a chicken curry, Italian herb bread, and cinnamon biscuit, which had 14 grams of spices added. The most plentiful spices by weight were turmeric (2.8 g), paprika (2.9 g) and oregano (2.3 g). The other spices were black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, garlic powder, ginger and rosemary. Their blood was drawn just before the meal and then every half hour up to 3 1/2 hours after the meal for analysis. 
 
The results showed a big difference in triglyceride and insulin levels (although not in blood glucose levels). The same men had 31% lower TG levels and 21% lower insulin levels after eating the experimental meal, which was made of the same basic food but with the addition of 14 grams of spices, compared to what their levels were after the control meal.

There are a lot of reasons for caution: the sample size was small, the subjects were overweight but otherwise healthy (so they had for example normal insulin responses to blood glucose, unlike many who have diabetes or insulin resistance), and they used a mix of spices so it's hard to know which spice(s) were the ones that helped prevent absorption of fats into the blood and kept insulin levels from rising too high. Also, 14 grams of spices in a single meal seems excessive, although the subjects had no bad reactions from eating this much spice.

Here's the good news and take away: this study and others like it reinforce a truth discovered by Ayurvedic practitioners centures ago: spices help keep us healthy! Here, we see that eating a fairly large combination of spices as part of our meal, as is typical of a healthy Indian diet, can help keep us healthy even if the meal is full of carbs and fat.

Thanks to my brother for the tip.
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Interview with Dr. Bharat Aggarwal, pioneer of turmeric research

10/9/2011

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I recently had the opportunity to speak again with Dr. Bharat Aggarwal, the pioneer in research on turmeric. His work at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston showed that turmeric and other spices are anti-inflammatory, making them anti-cancer, too, and it informed my book 'The Healthy Indian Diet,' giving explanations on why spices are good for us. 

Dr. Aggarwal recently wrote "Healing Spices," an awesome resource of the science behind various spices we use in cooking. Here's what one reviewer says about the book on Amazon.com: 

"This book is brimming over with real information backed up with reasearch into the benefits of spices for healing and maintaining health. It is presented in a digestable format and made accessable with fantastic recipes and resource connections. As an Ayurvedic Lifestyle consultant I am familiar with the benefits spices bring both in terms of taste and improving digestion. This book supports this view and offers so much more. It's time America, let's spice it up to get really healthy." Below is our interview on October 4, 2011.

What gave you the idea to write ‘Healing Spices’?

It’s very simple. If you remember, I mentioned to you [when we met last winter] that we discovered TNF-alpha and beta. It turned out that they are major mediators of inflammation, which is implicated in a lot of chronic disease as we are learning now. And after this discovery, we began to search for anti-inflammatory agents that block either production or action of TNF. That’s when we discovered that the active constituents from spices exhibit anti-inflammatory activity, right here at MD Anderson. So the book is a culmination of my work and that of many, many other people.

Read on...


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You don't have to change your whole way of eating

4/26/2011

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Some of you may feel the Healthy Indian Diet is all-consuming, that it will tell you to make drastic changes in what you eat. But this isn't true. Actually, I'm a fan of mixing things up. 

I bet most of you are like me and don't eat Indian food everyday. In fact being Indian-American, I still eat "local" stuff like pizzas and omlettes, and also love panini sandwiches like this one my brother made. 



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The quintessential Indian spice is also anti-cancer

4/20/2011

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Turmeric (haldi in Hindi) is the quintessential spice in the Healthy Indian Diet (and most South Asian diets) thanks largely to Ayurvedic practitioners of long ago, who recognized it's benefits to human health. Today, scientists are running clinical trials incorporating curcumin, the bioactive molecule in turmeric, as medicine. So far, the results have been promising.

M.D. Anderson in Houston, one of the largest cancer hospitals in the world, has been a hotbed of such research. One trial studied the outcomes of 25 patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma, one of the worst cancers to be diagnosed with, who were taking curcumin and nothing else -- as in no chemotherapy! Researchers found cancer growth stopped in 2 patients. Actually a large liver tumor in one patient shrunk by 73% in their estimation. (Other tumors in that patient did however grow.) You can read about the trial here. The actual manuscript describing the trial can be downloaded off the McCormick Spice Institute's website.



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    Disclaimer: The facts, advice and opinion on www.healthyindiandiet.com are based on scientific evidence published in journals. However, no content should be construed as medical advice. You should seek the counsel of your physician before making changes based on the content, especially if you have a medical condition.  
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