Astonishingly it turns out that tumeric really promotes brain damage repair. My new favorite beverage looks better and better.
I boil tumeric root and ginger root together after running them through a blender. The strained juice is easily added to any tea that you prefer or do not prefer for that matter.
I strongly recommend that anyone dealing with PTSD and brain injury generally as in concussion jumps of this. It certainly will not harm you at all.
Fresh tumeric is preferred, but powdered works well also.. .
I boil tumeric root and ginger root together after running them through a blender. The strained juice is easily added to any tea that you prefer or do not prefer for that matter.
I strongly recommend that anyone dealing with PTSD and brain injury generally as in concussion jumps of this. It certainly will not harm you at all.
Fresh tumeric is preferred, but powdered works well also.. .
Written By:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/how-whole-turmeric-heals-damaged-brain-1
Long
considered impossible to accomplish, new research reveals how a simple
spice might contribute to the regeneration of the damaged brain.
Turmeric is hands down one of the, if not the, most versatile healing spice in the world with over 600 experimentally confirmed health benefits, and an ancient history filled with deep reverence for its seemingly compassionate power to alleviate human suffering.
But, most of the focus over the past decade has been centered on only one of its many hundreds of phytocompounds: namely, the primary polyphenol in turmeric known as curcumin
which gives the spice its richly golden hue. This curcumin-centric
focus has lead to the development of some very good products, such as
phospholipid bound curcumin concentrate (e.g. Meriva, BCM-95)
which greatly helps to increase the absorption and bio-activity of
curcumin. But, curcumin isolates are only capable of conferring a part
of turmeric's therapeutic power – and therein lies the limitation and
hubris of the dominant 'isolate the active ingredient' model.
Indeed,
it has become typical within the so-called nutraceutical industry to
emulate the pharmaceutical model, which focuses on identifying a
particular "monochemical" tree within the forest of complexity
represented by each botanical agent, striving to standardize the
delivery of each purported 'active ingredient' with each serving, as if
it were a pharmaceutical drug. These extraction and isolation processes
also generates proprietary formulas which are what manufacturers want to
differentiate their product from all others and henceforth capture a
larger part of the market share; a value proposition that serves the
manufacturer and not the consumer/patient.
Truth be told,
there is no singular 'magic bullet' in foods and herbs responsible for
reproducing the whole plant's healing power. There are, in fact, in
most healing plants or foods hundreds of compounds orchestrated by the
intelligent 'invisible hand' of God or 'Nature,' or whatever you wish to
call it, and which can never be reduced to the activity of a singularly
quantifiable phytocompound or chemical.
Beyond The Curcumin 'Magic Bullet' Meme
Now, an exciting new study published in the journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy
provides additional support for the concept that curcumin alone is not
enough to explain the healing power of turmeric as a whole plant. The
study found that a little known, fat-soluble component within turmeric –
Ar-tumerone – may make "a promising candidate to support regeneration in neurologic disease."
Titled, "Aromatic-turmerone induces neural stem cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo,"
German researchers evaluated the effects of this turmeric-derived
compound on neural stem cells (NSCs) – the subgroup of brain cells
capable of continuous self-renewal required for brain repair.
The study found that when brain cells were exposed to ar-tumerone,
neural stem cells increased in number through enhanced proliferation.
Moreover, these newly formed neural stem cells also increased the number
of fully differentiated neuronal cells, indicating a healing effect was
taking place. This effect was also observed in a live animal model,
showing that rats injected with ar-tumerone into their brains
experienced increases in neural stem cell proliferation and the creation
of newly formed healthy brain cells.
This study did not go
unnoticed by major medical news channels. Here are some good reviews if
you wish to explore the implications in greater depth:
The research clearly indicates that turmeric is a great brain
supportive plant. For a more layperson oriented review, read the
following articles:
How To Get The Most Out of Your Turmeric
One of the most frequent questions we field is 'what is the best type
of turmeric or curcumin to use'? Obviously, given the aforementioned
research, the whole plant is going to carry a wider range of therapeutic
compounds than curcumin alone. And yet, most have been heavily
enculturated to focus entirely on the 'how much' question, opting to
identify the molecular weight (i.e. how many milligrams in a serving) of
a particular compound as more important than the qualitative dimensions
(e.g. is it organic? It is delivered within its natural context as food
or a whole plant?) which reflect the type of nutrigenomic information
the substance contains, and therefore the 'intelligence' it embodies. To
learn more about the intelligence of food watch my e-course 'The Wisdom of Food.'
And
really, there is no generic answer to a generic question about the best
way to take turmeric/curcumin. The question always comes from an
individual with a particular need, and so, recommendations must be
bio-individualized.
For instance, if you have colonic inflammation
or polyps, and you are trying to use turmeric to reduce inflammation
there or regress precancerous growths, then using the whole plant is
best versus a highly bioavailable form of curcumin in capsule form (e.g.
Meriva), for instance, which will likely be absorbed by the small
intestine and mostly pass through the liver never getting adequate
quantities to the large intestine. So, in this person's case taking a
teaspoon of relatively difficult to absorb turmeric may result in
painting the diseased surfaces of that person's intestinal or colonic
lumen with exactly the form needed to reverse disease.
But what
if you have someone who wants to experience a systemic effect, say, for
arthritis or for brain cancer? In these instances, getting turmeric
compounds such as curcumin through the glucuronidation barrier in the
liver with a phospholipid-bound or black pepper (piperine)
combination could be ideal. There is certainly a place for the
'nutraceutical' model when properly applied, especially when provided as
an adjuvant to the pharmaceutical model within an integrative medical
setting.
Ultimately, the goal is not to wait to have such a
serious health problem that you have to force yourself to take a 'heroic
dose' of any herb or food extract. Better is to use small amounts in
culinary doses in combination with ingredients that synergize on a
physiochemical/informational and sensual basis (producing the all
important vitamin P [pleasure] as well!). Recently we actually featured a study that showed culinary doses of rosemary helped improve memory whereas higher 'heroic' doses impaired it!
This
is why exploring the use of turmeric in curries, or by adding a pinch
in a smoothie, may be an ideal daily supplementation approach, versus
capsules, whose questionably 'natural' capsules and excipients all can
add up to cause some stress on the liver you are trying to protect with
these natural interventions. Just remember quality is everything and
less is more!
As
you may already know, our database is the world's most extensive open
access natural medical database on over 1,800 different natural
substances, with over 1600 study abstracts on turmeric's healing
properties indexed thus far: view the Turmeric research page
here to view! If you take a look at the laundry list of over 600
diseases that this spice (or its components, e.g. curcumin) has been
studied for to prevent and/or treat, the sheer volume of supportive
literature is astounding. Amazingly, we have identified over 180
physiological pathways – according to their conventional pharmacological
characterization, e.g. COX-2 inhibitor, Interleukin 6 down-regulator –
by which turmeric or its components heals the human body. In addition,
you will find over 100 articles on turmeric's neuroprotective properties
on this page: Turmeric as a Neuroprotective agent.
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