What a teaspoon a day of the spice turmeric may be able to do for those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Treating Alzheimer’s with Turmeric
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What about treating Alzheimer’s disease with the spice turmeric? An exciting case series was published in 2012. Three Alzheimer’s patients treated with turmeric, and their symptoms declined, along with the burden on their caregivers. Let me show you what these data mean in real lives. Case number one: 83 year old woman, started losing her memory, getting disoriented. Then she started having problems taking care of herself, wandering aimlessly, incontinent. After the turmeric though, her agitation, apathy, anxiety, and irritability were relieved and she had less accidents. Furthermore she began to laugh again, and sing again, and knit again. After taking turmeric for more than a year she came to recognize her family and now lives a peaceful life without a significant behavioral or psychological symptom of dementia.
Case 2 was similar, but with hallucinations and delusions and depression, which appeared relieved by turmeric. She began to recognize her family again and now lives in a peacefully serene manner. And the third case, similar as well, including an improvement in cognition. This is the first demonstration that turmeric may be effective and safe for the treatment of the behavioral and psychological symptom of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease patients. They call it a drug, but it’s just a spice you can walk into any grocery store and buy for a few bucks. They were giving people like a teaspoon a day, which comes out to be about 15 cents.
Two trials using curcumin supplements rather than turmeric, however, failed to show a benefit. Curcumin is just one of hundreds of phytochemicals found in turmeric. Concentrated into pill form at up to 40 times the dose, no evidence of efficacy was found. Why didn’t they get the same dramatic results we saw in the three case reports? Well, those three cases may have total flukes, but on the other hand turmeric, the whole food, is greater than the sum of its parts.
There is a long list of compounds that of been isolated from turmeric, and it’s possible that each component in the mixture of curcumin-like compounds plays a distinct role in making it useful against Alzheimer’s disease, and hence a mixture of compounds might better represent turmeric in its medicinal value better than curcumin alone. But why concoct some artificial mixture when Mother Nature already did it for us with turmeric? Because you can’t patent the spice. And if you can’t patent it, how are you going to charge more than 15 cents?
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Katie Schloer.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- N Hishikawa, Y Takahashi, Y Amakusa, Y Tanno, Y Tuji, H Niwa, N Murakami, U K Krishna. Effects of turmeric on alzheimer’s disease with behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. Ayu. 2012 Oct-Dec; 33(4): 499–504.
- J M Ringman, S A Frautschy, E Teng, A N Begum, J Bardens, M Beigi, K H Gylys, V Badmaev, D D Heath, L G Apostolova, V Porter, Z Vanek, G A Marshall, G Hellemann, C Sugar, D Masterman, T J Montine, J L Cummings, G M Cole. Oral curcumin, for alzheimer’s disease: tolerability and efficacy in a 24-week randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled study. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2012 Oct 29;4(5):43.
- T Ahmed, A Gilani. Therapeutic potential of turmeric in Alzheimer’s disease: Curcumin or curcuminoids? Phytother Res. 2014 Apr;28(4):517-25.
- S C Gupta, B Sung, J H Kim, S Prasad, S Li, B B Aggarwal. Multitargeting by turmeric, the golden spice: from kitchen to clinic. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2013 Sep;57(9):1510-28.
- L Zhang, M Fiala, J Cashman, J Sayre, A Espinosa, M Mahanian, J Zaghi, V Badmaev, M C Graves, G Bernard, M Rosenthal. Curcuminoids enhance amyloid-B uptake by macrophages of Alzheimer’s disease patients. J Alzheimers Dis. 2006 Sep;10(1):1-7.
Images thanks to MTSOfan via Flickr.
What about treating Alzheimer’s disease with the spice turmeric? An exciting case series was published in 2012. Three Alzheimer’s patients treated with turmeric, and their symptoms declined, along with the burden on their caregivers. Let me show you what these data mean in real lives. Case number one: 83 year old woman, started losing her memory, getting disoriented. Then she started having problems taking care of herself, wandering aimlessly, incontinent. After the turmeric though, her agitation, apathy, anxiety, and irritability were relieved and she had less accidents. Furthermore she began to laugh again, and sing again, and knit again. After taking turmeric for more than a year she came to recognize her family and now lives a peaceful life without a significant behavioral or psychological symptom of dementia.
Case 2 was similar, but with hallucinations and delusions and depression, which appeared relieved by turmeric. She began to recognize her family again and now lives in a peacefully serene manner. And the third case, similar as well, including an improvement in cognition. This is the first demonstration that turmeric may be effective and safe for the treatment of the behavioral and psychological symptom of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease patients. They call it a drug, but it’s just a spice you can walk into any grocery store and buy for a few bucks. They were giving people like a teaspoon a day, which comes out to be about 15 cents.
Two trials using curcumin supplements rather than turmeric, however, failed to show a benefit. Curcumin is just one of hundreds of phytochemicals found in turmeric. Concentrated into pill form at up to 40 times the dose, no evidence of efficacy was found. Why didn’t they get the same dramatic results we saw in the three case reports? Well, those three cases may have total flukes, but on the other hand turmeric, the whole food, is greater than the sum of its parts.
There is a long list of compounds that of been isolated from turmeric, and it’s possible that each component in the mixture of curcumin-like compounds plays a distinct role in making it useful against Alzheimer’s disease, and hence a mixture of compounds might better represent turmeric in its medicinal value better than curcumin alone. But why concoct some artificial mixture when Mother Nature already did it for us with turmeric? Because you can’t patent the spice. And if you can’t patent it, how are you going to charge more than 15 cents?
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Katie Schloer.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- N Hishikawa, Y Takahashi, Y Amakusa, Y Tanno, Y Tuji, H Niwa, N Murakami, U K Krishna. Effects of turmeric on alzheimer’s disease with behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. Ayu. 2012 Oct-Dec; 33(4): 499–504.
- J M Ringman, S A Frautschy, E Teng, A N Begum, J Bardens, M Beigi, K H Gylys, V Badmaev, D D Heath, L G Apostolova, V Porter, Z Vanek, G A Marshall, G Hellemann, C Sugar, D Masterman, T J Montine, J L Cummings, G M Cole. Oral curcumin, for alzheimer’s disease: tolerability and efficacy in a 24-week randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled study. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2012 Oct 29;4(5):43.
- T Ahmed, A Gilani. Therapeutic potential of turmeric in Alzheimer’s disease: Curcumin or curcuminoids? Phytother Res. 2014 Apr;28(4):517-25.
- S C Gupta, B Sung, J H Kim, S Prasad, S Li, B B Aggarwal. Multitargeting by turmeric, the golden spice: from kitchen to clinic. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2013 Sep;57(9):1510-28.
- L Zhang, M Fiala, J Cashman, J Sayre, A Espinosa, M Mahanian, J Zaghi, V Badmaev, M C Graves, G Bernard, M Rosenthal. Curcuminoids enhance amyloid-B uptake by macrophages of Alzheimer’s disease patients. J Alzheimers Dis. 2006 Sep;10(1):1-7.
Images thanks to MTSOfan via Flickr.
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Title
Treating Alzheimer’s with Turmeric
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Content URLDoctor's Note
What role might turmeric play in preventing Alzheimer’s in the first place? See my previous video Preventing Alzheimer’s with Turmeric.
I’ve previously addressed the thorny issue of patenting natural plant remedies in my video: Plants as Intellectual Property – Patently Wrong?
The whole-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts theme is one that comes up over and over:
- Broccoli: Sprouts vs. Supplements
- Treating Asthma With Plants vs. Supplements?
- The Wrong Way to Boost Serotonin
- Produce, Not Pills to Increase Physical Attractiveness
What else might the cheap, easily available spice turmeric do? It may help fight arthritis (Turmeric Curcumin and Rheumatoid Arthritis and Turmeric Curcumin and Osteoarthritis) and cancer:
- Back to Our Roots: Curry and Cancer
- Carcinogenic Blocking Effects of Turmeric
- Turmeric Curcumin Reprogramming Cancer Cell Death
- Turmeric Curcumin and Colon Cancer
- Topical Application of Turmeric Curcumin for Cancer
But it’s not for everyone: Who Shouldn’t Consume Curcumin or Turmeric?
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