Benefits of Saffron and Turmeric.. Dr. Greger HNTD..

[patty]

My daughter's Mother in-law has the condition of Al. I suggested to give saffron a try. I googled a recipe for Vegetable Paella as Dr. Greger suggested using saffron in it and it looks pretty easy to make and turmeric can be substituted.

Treating Alzheimer’s with Saffron

Despite the billions poured into Alzheimer’s research, there is no effective treatment to reverse the progression of the disease. There are medications that can help manage the symptoms, though, and so can something found right in your grocery store. Although some remarkable benefits have been reported in anecdotal case studies with the spice turmeric, 129 the best data we have on spice-based interventions for Alzheimer’s is for saffron. A spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, saffron was found in a double-blind trial to help diminish the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. In a sixteen-week study, Alzheimer’s patients with mild to moderate dementia who took saffron capsules displayed significantly better cognitive function on average than a group of patients who took a placebo. 130 How about putting saffron head-to-head against one of the most popular Alzheimer’s drugs on the market: donepezil (commonly marketed under the brand name Aricept)? A twenty-two-week double-blind study (meaning that neither the researchers nor the subjects knew who was on the drug and who was on the spice until the study’s conclusion) found that saffron appears just as effective at treating Alzheimer’s symptoms as the leading drug. 131 Unfortunately, working just as well as medication isn’t saying much, 132 but at least a person doesn’t have to risk the drug’s side effects, most typically nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. 133 While there is no proven way to halt the progression of Alzheimer’s, if you do know anyone suffering from the disease, regularly cooking him or her saffron-spiced paella may help.

Greger, Michael, MD; Stone, Gene (2015-12-08). How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease (p. 58). Flatiron Books. Kindle Edition.

VEGETABLE PAELLA

http://www.simple-veganista.com/2016/01 ... aella.html

Why You Should Include Turmeric in Your Daily Diet

In recent years, more than five thousand articles have been published in the medical literature about curcumin, the pigment in turmeric that gives it that bright yellow color. Many of these papers sport impressive-looking diagrams suggesting that curcumin can benefit a multitude of a variety of diseases, and dozens more studies are on the way. 5

We have seen how curcumin may play a role in preventing or treating lung disease, brain disease, and a variety of cancers, including multiple myeloma, colon cancer, and pancreatic cancer. But curcumin has also been shown to help speed recovery after surgery6 and effectively treat rheumatoid arthritis better than the leading drug of choice. 7 It also may be effective in treating osteoarthritis8 and other inflammatory conditions, such as lupus9 and inflammatory bowel disease. 10 In the latest trial for ulcerative colitis, a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study found that more than 50 percent of patients achieved remission within just one month on curcumin compared to none of the patients who received the placebo. 11 If you are as convinced as I am that you should include turmeric in your diet to benefit from its pigment curcumin, the next questions, then, are: how much do you eat, how do you eat it, and what are the risks?

A Quarter Teaspoon of Turmeric Every Day

Turmeric is potent stuff. If I took a sample of your blood and exposed it to an oxidizing chemical, researchers could quantify the damage it caused to the DNA in your blood cells with sophisticated technology that allows them to count the number of breaks in DNA strands. If I then gave you a single pinch of turmeric to eat once a day for a week, redrew your blood, and again exposed your blood cells to the same free radicals, you would see that with the tiny bit of turmeric on board, the number of cells with DNA damage could be cut in half. 12 That’s not mixing turmeric with cells in a petri dish— that’s having you ingest the spice and then measuring the effects in your blood. And this was not some fancy curcumin supplement, not some turmeric extract. It was just the plain spice you can buy at any grocery store. And, the dose was tiny, about one-eighth of a teaspoon.

Now that’s powerful!

The doses of turmeric that have been used in human studies range from less than one-sixteenth of a teaspoon up to nearly two tablespoons a day. 13 Few adverse effects have been reported even at high doses, but the studies typically have lasted only a month or so. We don’t know what long-term effects of high doses there may be. Because turmeric can have such powerful drug-like effects, until we have better safety data, I would not advise anyone to take more than the culinary doses that have a long-standing record of apparent safety. How much is that? Though traditional Indian diets can include up to about a teaspoon of turmeric daily, the average intake in India is closer to a quarter teaspoon a day. 14 So that’s how much I recommend you get as part of your Daily Dozen. How to Eat Turmeric Primitive peoples often used spices in sophisticated ways. For instance, quinine from cinchona bark was used to treat the symptoms of malaria long before the disease was even identified, and the raw ingredients of aspirin have been used as a popular painkiller long before Mr. Friedrich Bayer came along. 15 Over the last twenty-five years, about half of new drug discoveries have come from natural products. 16

There’s a plant in South Asia called adhatoda (adu, meaning “goat,” and thoda, meaning “not touch”— it’s so bitter even the goats won’t eat it). Its leaves are steeped with pepper to make a folk remedy effective for treating asthma. Somehow it was figured out what scientists didn’t discover until 1928: Adding pepper vastly boosted the plant’s antiasthmatic properties. And now we know why. About 5 percent of black pepper by weight is composed of a compound called piperine, which accounts for pepper’s pungent flavor and aroma. But piperine is also a potent inhibitor of drug metabolism. 17 One of the ways your liver gets rid of foreign substances is by making them water soluble so you can pee them out. This black pepper molecule, however, inhibits that process, thereby boosting blood levels of the medicinal compounds in adhatoda— and it can do the same for curcumin in turmeric root.

Within an hour of eating turmeric, curcumin appears in your bloodstream, but only in small traces. Why only scant amounts? Presumably, your liver is actively working to get rid of it. But what if you suppress that elimination process by eating some black pepper? If you consume the same amount of curcumin but add a quarter teaspoon of black pepper, the level of curcumin in your blood shoots up by 2,000 percent. 18 Even just the littlest pinch of pepper, just one-twentieth of a teaspoon, can significantly boost curcumin blood levels. 19 And guess what is a common ingredient in many curry powders besides turmeric? Black pepper. Curry powder in India is also often served with a source of fat, which alone can enhance the bioavailability of curcumin seven- to eightfold. 20 (Unfortunately, traditional knowledge appeared to fail here as to the best source of that fat. Indian cuisine employs a great deal of clarified butter, or ghee, which may explain the country’s relatively high rates of heart disease despite its otherwise relatively healthy diet. 21)

My favorite way to incorporate turmeric is to use fresh turmeric root. Any large Asian market should carry it in the produce aisle. It looks like skinny fingers of gingerroot, but when you snap it open, you are greeted by the most unreal, Day-Glo, fluorescent-orange color. My quarter teaspoon of dried turmeric recommendation translates into about a quarter inch of fresh turmeric root. The roots are about two inches long, cost about ten cents each, and can last for weeks in the fridge or basically forever in the freezer. Every year you can go to the store and buy a twelve-month supply of fresh turmeric for about five dollars.

There’s evidence to suggest that the cooked and raw forms may have different properties. Cooked
turmeric appears to offer better DNA protection, while raw turmeric may have greater anti-inflammatory effects. 22 I enjoy it both ways. I use a grater to add my daily quarter inch into whatever I may be cooking (or right onto a cooked sweet potato), or I throw a raw slice into a smoothie. You probably won’t even taste it. Fresh turmeric has a much more subtle flavor than dried, so it may be an especially good option for those who don’t like turmeric’s taste. You will see it, though. Be careful— it can stain clothing and surfaces. Turmeric may not just make your health golden but your fingertips, as well.

Consuming turmeric with soy may offer a double benefit for osteoarthritis sufferers. 23 Scrambled tofu is the classic turmeric-soy combination, but let me share two of my favorites: one raw and one cooked. You can whip up a pumpkin pie smoothie in less than three minutes. Simply blend a can of pumpkin purée, a handful of frozen cranberries and pitted dates, pumpkin pie spice to taste, a quarter-inch turmeric slice (or quarter-teaspoon of powder), and unsweetened soy milk to reach your preferred consistency.

Another favorite is my pumpkin custard (aka crustless pie). All you need to do is blend one can of pumpkin purée with about ten ounces of silken tofu (the Mori-Nu brand is convenient because it stays fresh without refrigeration), as much pumpkin pie spice as you like, and one to two dozen pitted dates (depending on how much of a sweet tooth you have). Pour into a dish and bake at 350 ° F until cracks appear on the surface. By skipping the piecrust and sticking with a custard, you’re left with vegetables, tofu, spices, and fruit. The more you eat, the healthier you are.

Fresh or powdered, turmeric is a natural flavor fit for Indian and Moroccan cuisines, but I add it to most anything. I find it pairs particularly well with brown rice dishes, lentil soup, and roasted cauliflower. Prepared yellow mustard typically already has turmeric in it for color, but try to find a salt-free variety— one that’s essentially just vinegar, a cruciferous vegetable (mustard seeds), and turmeric. I can’t think of a healthier condiment.

Greger, Michael, MD; Stone, Gene (2015-12-08). How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease (p. 354). Flatiron Books. Kindle Edition.

Aloha, patty

[Ron4310]

Interesting about turmeric. I have put 1/4 tsp in my cooked cereal every morning for years. Guess I'll keep doing it. Thanks for the post.

[patty]

Interesting about turmeric. I have put 1/4 tsp in my cooked cereal every morning for years. Guess I'll keep doing it. Thanks for the post.

Lucky You:) Here is some more information about turmeric. My daughter's beloved dog, has tumors in her lungs and I had suggested turmeric.

Carcinogen-Blocking Effects of Turmeric

The Indian spice turmeric, which gives curry powder its characteristic golden color, may also help prevent some of the DNA damage caused by smoking. Since 1987, the National Cancer Institute has tested more than a thousand different compounds for “chemopreventive” (cancer-preventing) activity. Only a few dozen have made it to clinical trials, but among the most promising is curcumin, the bright-yellow pigment in turmeric. 12

Chemopreventive agents can be classified into different subgroups based on which stage of cancer development they help to fight: Carcinogen blockers and antioxidants help prevent the initial triggering DNA mutation, and antiproliferatives work by keeping tumors from growing and spreading. Curcumin is special in that it appears to belong to all three groups, meaning it may potentially help prevent and/ or arrest cancer cell growth. 13

Researchers have investigated the effects of curcumin on the DNA-mutating ability of various carcinogens and found that curcumin was indeed an effective antimutagen against several common cancer-causing substances. 14 But these experiments were done in vitro, meaning effectively in a laboratory test tube. After all, it wouldn’t be ethical to expose humans to nasty carcinogens to observe whether they got cancer. However, someone got the bright idea of finding a group of people who already, of their own accord, had carcinogens coursing through their veins. Smokers!

One way to measure the level of DNA-mutating chemicals in peoples’ bodies is dripping their urine on bacteria growing in a petri dish. Bacteria, like all life on Earth, share DNA as a common genetic language. Unsurprisingly, scientists who tried this experiment found that the urine from nonsmokers caused far fewer DNA mutations— after all, they had a lot fewer carcinogens flowing through their systems. But when the smokers were given turmeric, the DNA-mutation rate dropped by up to 38 percent. 15 They weren’t given curcumin pills; they merely got less than a teaspoon a day of just the regular turmeric spice you’d find at the grocery store. Of course, turmeric can’t completely mitigate the effects of smoking. Even after the participants ate turmeric for a month, the DNA-damaging ability of the smokers’ urine still exceeded that of the nonsmokers’. But smokers who make turmeric a staple of their diets may help lessen some of the damage.

The anticancer effects of curcumin extend beyond its ability to potentially prevent DNA mutations. It also appears to help regulate programmed cell death. Your cells are preprogrammed to die naturally to make way for fresh cells through a process known as apoptosis (from the Greek ptosis, falling, and apo, away from). In a sense, your body is rebuilding itself every few months16 with the building materials you provide it through your diet. Some cells, however, overstay their welcome— namely, cancer cells. By somehow disabling their own suicide mechanism, they don’t die when they’re supposed to. Because they continue to thrive and divide, cancer cells can eventually form tumors and potentially spread throughout the body.

So how does curcumin affect this process? It appears to have the ability to reprogram the self-destruct mechanism back into cancer cells. All cells contain so-called death receptors that trigger the self-destruction sequence, but cancer cells can disable their own death receptors. Curcumin, however, appears able to reactivate them. 17 Curcumin can also kill cancer cells directly by activating “execution enzymes” called caspases inside cancer cells that destroy them from within by chopping up their proteins. 18 Unlike most chemotherapy drugs, against which cancer cells can develop resistance over time, curcumin affects several mechanisms of cell death simultaneously, making it potentially harder for cancer cells to avoid destruction. 19

Curcumin has been found to be effective against a variety of other cancer cells in vitro, including those of the breast, brain, blood, colon, kidney, liver, lungs, and skin. For reasons not fully understood, curcumin seems to leave noncancerous cells alone. 20 Unfortunately, turmeric has yet to be tested in clinical trials for the prevention or treatment of lung cancer, but with no downsides at culinary doses, I’d suggest trying to find ways to incorporate the spice into your diet. I offer a number of suggestions in part 2.

Greger, Michael, MD; Stone, Gene (2015-12-08). How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease (pp. 35-36). Flatiron Books. Kindle Edition.


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How Not to Die from Digestive Cancers

Every year, Americans lose more than five million years of life from cancers that may have been prevented. 1 Only a small percentage of all human cancers are attributable to purely genetic factors. The rest involve external factors, particularly our diet. Your skin covers about twenty square feet. Your lungs, if you were to flatten out all the tiny air pockets, could cover hundreds of square feet. 3 And your intestines? Counting all the little folds, some scientists estimate that your gut would blanket thousands of square feet, 4 vastly more expansive than your skin and lungs combined. What you eat may very well be your primary interface with the outside world. This means that regardless of the carcinogens that could be lurking in the environment, your greatest exposure may be through your diet.

Three of the most common cancers of the digestive tract kill approximately one hundred thousand Americans each year. Colorectal (colon and rectal) cancer, which claims fifty thousand lives annually, 5 ranks among the most commonly diagnosed of all cancers. Thankfully, it is also among the most treatable if caught early enough. Pancreatic cancer, on the other hand, is virtually a death sentence for the approximately forty-six thousand people who develop it every year. 6 Few survive beyond a year after diagnosis, which means prevention is paramount. Esophageal cancer, which affects the tube between your mouth and stomach, is also frequently fatal for its eighteen thousand annual victims. 7 The foods you eat can indirectly affect cancer risk, for example, by exacerbating acid reflux, a risk factor for esophageal cancer, or through direct contact with the lining of the digestive tract.

COLORECTAL CANCER

The average person has about a one-in-twenty chance of developing colorectal cancer over the course of his or her lifetime. 8 Fortunately, it is among the most treatable cancers, as regular screening has enabled doctors to detect and remove the cancer before it spreads. There are more than one million colorectal cancer survivors in the United States alone, and, among those diagnosed before the cancer has spread beyond the colon, the five-year survival rate is about 90 percent. 9 But, in its early stages, colorectal cancer rarely causes symptoms. If the cancer is not caught until later stages, treatment is more difficult and less effective. Starting at age fifty until age seventy-five, you should either get stool testing every year, stool testing every three years plus a sigmoidoscopy every five years, or a colonoscopy every ten years. 10 For more on the risks and benefits of these options, see chapter 15. While regular screenings are certainly sensible to detect colorectal cancer, preventing it in the first place is even better.

Turmeric

India’s gross domestic product (GDP) is about eight times less than that of the United States, 11 and about 20 percent of its population lives below the poverty line, 12 yet cancer rates in India are much lower than in the United States. Women in the United States may have ten times more colorectal cancer than women in India, seventeen times more lung cancer, nine times more endometrial cancer and melanoma, twelve times more kidney cancer, eight times more bladder cancer, and five times more breast cancer. Men in the United States appear to have eleven times more colorectal cancer than men in India, twenty-three times more prostate cancer, fourteen times more melanoma, nine times more kidney cancer, and seven times more lung and bladder cancer. 13 Why such a discrepancy? The regular use of the spice turmeric in Indian cooking has been proposed as one possible explanation. 14 In chapter 2, we saw how curcumin, the yellow pigment in the spice turmeric, may be effective against cancer cells in vitro. Very little of the curcumin you eat gets absorbed into your bloodstream, however, so it may never come in sufficient contact with tumors outside the digestive tract. 15 But what doesn’t get absorbed into your blood ends up in your colon, where it could impact the cells lining your large intestine where cancerous polyps develop.

The emergence of colorectal cancer can be broken up into three stages. The first sign may be what are called “aberrant crypt foci,” or abnormal clusters of cells along the lining of the colon. Next come polyps that grow from that inner surface. The final stage is thought to occur when a benign polyp transforms into a cancerous one. The cancer can then eat through the wall of the colon and spread throughout the body. To what degree can curcumin block each stage of colorectal cancer?

Studying smokers, who tend to have a lot of aberrant crypt foci, investigators found that curcumin consumption could reduce the number of those cancer-associated structures in their rectums up to nearly 40 percent, from eighteen down to eleven, within just thirty days. The only reported side effect
was a yellow tint to their stools. 16

What if polyps have already developed? Six months of curcumin, along with another phytonutrient called quercetin, which is found naturally in such fruits and vegetables as red onions and grapes, were found to decrease the number and size of polyps by more than half in patients with a hereditary form of colorectal cancer. Again, virtually no side effects were reported. 17 What if the polyps have already transformed into cancer? In a last-ditch attempt to save the lives of fifteen patients with advanced colorectal cancer who didn’t respond to any of the standard chemotherapy agents or radiation, oncologists started them on a turmeric extract. In the two to four months of treatment, it appeared to help stall the disease in one-third of the patients, five out of fifteen. 18

If we were talking about some new kind of chemotherapy drug that only helped one in three people, you’d have to weigh that against all the serious side effects. But when it’s just some plant extract shown to be remarkably safe, even if it just helped one in a hundred, it would be worth considering. With no serious downsides, a one-in-three potential benefit for end-stage cancer seems like it would spark further research, right? But who’s going to pay for a study of something that can’t be patented? 19

The low cancer rate in India may be due in part to the spices they use, but it may also stem from the types of foods they are putting those spices on. India is one of the world’s largest producers of fruits and vegetables, and only about 7 percent of the adult population eats meat on a daily basis. What most of the population does eat every day are dark-green, leafy vegetables and legumes, 20 such as beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils, which are packed with another class of cancer-fighting compounds called phytates.

Greger, Michael, MD; Stone, Gene (2015-12-08). How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease (p. 64). Flatiron Books. Kindle Edition.

Aloha, patty