Turmeric is one of the most common household spices in Asian kitchen. It contains a yellow colored antioxidant called curcumin. It is known to have some therapeutic properties. It is considered possibly effective for hay fever, depression, high cholesterol, fatty liver, osteoarthritis and itching. However, it is considered possibly ineffective for Alzheimer disease, stomach ulcers and radiation dermatitis.
Some people also believe its effectiveness against heartburn, memory skills, inflammatory bowel disease, stress etc, but we don't have sufficient scientific evidence to support this assumption.
Turmeric is considered likely safe for use as food and when applied to the skin. Because of its antioxidant and therapeutic properties, it is considered one of the healthy food ingredient.
Recently, the health benefits of turmeric has got a lot of attention from politician, relevant experts, medical practitioners and general public. There are different views from the different personnel. In general, they can be categorized as follows:
1. Turmeric is a medicine that can be used to cure or treat the COVID-19 disease.
2. Turmeric is a healthy food ingredient with some known therapeutic properties. Since healthy people are more likely to get recovered from COVID-19, the use of turmeric might benefit us during this pandemic situation.
3. Turmeric is a healthy ingredient. But, it does not help in the recovery from COVID-19.
4. Turmeric is just a food ingredient, as it gives yellow color. It does not have any health benefit or therapeutic properties.
Let's try to read the updated monograph of turmeric to evaluate different views.
Please put your opinion in the comments below.
Excellent blog! Thankyou sir, for such multifarious blog. This really cleared some of my doubts. I believe, I might relate to many others like me, so I find it reasonable to share what I learnt from the blog. This is open to discussion though! Please correct me, if I am wrong!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this blog, my attention was specially drawn by the fact that curcumin/turmeric possibly prevents (in theory) iron absorption in body--when taken in amounts greater than our daily normal intake. I believe, since, either iron deficiency, or excess, both influence the functioning of our immune system--because iron is required during DNA synthesis and regeneration of ATP--the prevention (in theory) of iron absorption, by curcumin and turmeric should theoretically result in iron deficiency which is not in favor of humans—specially the people with iron-deficiency diseases. So, unless, the role of curcumin and turmeric is clinically proven to treat the disease, normal people—and specially the people with ‘iron deficiency” diseases--might be lured into a possibly false concept to use turmeric to prevent or cure Covid-19, and instead get vulnerable to iron-deficiency-related aberrations in the body.
But depriving microbes of iron has been reported to be one of the mechanisms of how our immune system fights against microbes, as has been mentioned in this work: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3173740/). However, there is little research to confirm whether the curcumin/turmeric affects the specific Covid-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) in the amount of iron it absorbs from human body, for its virulence and proliferating needs. I think this is the area that might require further research.
Thank you, sorry for late reply.
DeleteNo problem, sir.
Delete