Posted on 06/23/2008 2:45:07 PM PDT by blam
Common Cooking Spice Found In Curry Shows Promise In Combating Diabetes And Obesity
Researchers believe that curcumin, the anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant ingredient in turmeric, may lessen insulin resistance and prevents Type 2 diabetes in these mouse models by dampening the inflammatory response provoked by obesity. (Credit: iStockphoto/Nilesh Bhange)
ScienceDaily (June 23, 2008) Turmeric, an Asian spice found in many curries, has a long history of use in reducing inflammation, healing wounds and relieving pain, but can it prevent diabetes? Since inflammation plays a big role in many diseases and is believed to be involved in onset of both obesity and Type 2 diabetes, Drew Tortoriello, M.D., an endocrinologist and research scientist at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center, and his colleagues were curious what effect the herb might have on diabetic mice.
Dr. Tortoriello, working with pediatric resident Stuart Weisberg, M.D., Ph.D., and Rudolph Leibel, M.D., fellow endocrinologist and the co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, discovered that turmeric-treated mice were less susceptible to developing Type 2 diabetes, based on their blood glucose levels, and glucose and insulin tolerance tests. They also discovered that turmeric-fed obese mice showed significantly reduced inflammation in fat tissue and liver compared to controls. They speculate that curcumin, the anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant ingredient in turmeric, lessens insulin resistance and prevents Type 2 diabetes in these mouse models by dampening the inflammatory response provoked by obesity.
Their findings are the subject of a soon-to-be published paper in Endocrinology and were recently presented at ENDO 2008, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in San Francisco.
Turmeric (Curcuma longa) has no known dose-limiting toxicities in doses of up to at least 12 grams daily in humans. The researchers tested high-doses of a dietary curcumin in two distinct mouse models of obesity and Type 2
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
ping
I guess it makes hot dogs into health food.
This is the best news I've heard in weeks!
“They need to put it in pill form for people who don*t like it, but might benefit from taking it.”
Any vitamin store has it.
I take it several times a week, when I’m not eating curry.
Thanks for the information.
Curry is one spice I really don't like at all, but I'd take it in pill form.
No thanks!
I got sick on curried shrimp in the 80's and can't even smell curry without getting sick to my stomach:-(
Looks good. I tried to order three pounds of tumeric from there and when I got to the end of checkout, I got this message: "The minimum order is $30.00. Please add more items to your cart."
LOL, I don't want ten pounds of tumeric.
Ping!
How does your mother take it?
I have some in pill form.
Here is a website with a lot of good looking products that I have been wanting to try. They have a spices page but it seems to be down now. I e-mailed them to let them know. Their prices on nuts and dried fruits look very good to me. I'm thinking it is time to stock up before prices get really out of hand.
She puts a teaspoon in a cup with some almond oil with her vitamins and lets the vitamins dissolve then ... spoons it out I guess. blech! I can't account for her way of doing things but her sense of taste is pretty bad so I suppose it doesn't bother her.
The way I TOLD her to take it is an old Ayurvedic recommendation. One tspn of turmeric, one tspn of almond oil in a cup of warm milk. The Indians use/used ghee (clarified butter) instead of almond oil. It is supposed to take the turmeric deeper into the tissues.
The lumen of the gut does take oils like that directly into the bloodstream. I'm not sure how the milk is supposed to help but it may have to do with the protein in it. Since she doesn't sleep well I tell her the warm milk before bedtime might be helpful for that too.
I like the taste of it that way. I find it to be rich and smooth.
Just to make it sound good; chocolate has very high levels of anti-oxidants according to recent studies. Particularly dark chocolate but who's splitting hairs anyway? Mustn't deprive chocolate receptors.
Thanks, I know. I think I posted an article on that one too.
There are two problems with this. First, the genetics of the murine model (mice) just does not match that of the human model. They are both mammals, but a lot of time is wasted testing drugs that work in mice, but not in humans; while things that go the other way (works for humans, not mice) aren't tested, because they don't work on lab animals. So this is not a finding you can use immediately in human health.
Second, suppressing the immune response can hide or delay symptoms of auto-immune disease like diabetes, but it is never a cure. In humans, giving immune system suppressing drugs like prednisone is related to increased rates of diabetes.
Also in Belmont, Sunnyvale, Mountain View...many of them. Super cheap!
Thanks. Long drive from Colorado though.
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