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Turmeric

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Your memory not as good as it used to be? Trouble concentrating? Maybe you should up your intake of Indian curries or other dishes that contain the spice turmeric, which comes from a South Asian plant in the same family (Zingiberaceae) as ginger.

A characteristic shade of bright orange-yellow, turmeric is often used to colour ice cream, yogurts, cakes and other foods.

Jeya Henry, director of the Functional Food Centre at Oxford Brookes University, says turmeric is one of his favourite medicinal spices, second only to garlic. 'It is an amazing compound,' he says. 'A truly amazing compound, it has a great effect on brain function.'

Curcumin, turmeric's main active compound, has been widely studied and has many potential health benefits. 'Turmeric powder prepared from the turmeric plant has been in use for centuries in the traditional medicine of China and India for treating wounds, infections, and other skin problems,' says Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy, of the University of Michigan, US. 'Curcumin has a surprising array of antioxidant, anticancer, antimutagenic, antibiotic, antiviral, antifungal, anti-amyloid, antidiabetic, and anti-inflammatory properties.'

Using a combination of solid-state NMR and differential scanning calorimetry experiments, Ramamoorthy's team recently showed that curcumin has a strong effect on membrane structure, inserting deep into the lipid bilayer that makes up the cell membrane, improving order of the bilayer and so making the cell more resistant to infection.

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Jeffrey Brender, a member the Ramamoorthy's lab, adds that curcumin has shown promising effects in Alzheimer's. 'The incidence of Alzheimer's is much lower in the south Asian population in the US than the general population as whole,' he says. 'Turmeric consumption may be a factor in this difference.' The antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties of curcumin can help reduce neuron death and other Alzheimer's symptoms, he says. Curcumin can also disaggregate amyloid plaques, the toxic protein clumps known to form in the brain of Alzheimer's patients.

Curcumin is less effective in pill form because of its low bioavailability, breaking down rapidly in water and in the body, Brender says. 'Eating curcumin with oils helps to solubilise it and the greasy environment may also protect it from degradation,' he says. 'Heating curcumin and then cooling it also seems to make it more soluble and effective, although the reason for this effect is not known.'

Thus far, the only biologically active compounds in turmeric with confirmed benefits are curcumin and several curcumin-like derivatives, such as demethoxycurcumin or bis-demethoxycurcumin. These derivatives are found in lower concentrations than curcumin but in some cases are more active, Brender says. He does not rule out discovery of other important compounds, adding: 'It would be interesting to see if there are other bioactive compounds in turmeric that are unrelated to curcumin.'

News from: http://biologija.com.hr

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