Curry Kills..........

During a chat with a group of ladies last week, we got onto the topic of of supplements, and which herbs and spices might be beneficial in promoting brain health. One lady advised me that every morning she pours a good dollop of flaxseed oil onto her breakfast cereal along with some L.S.A and psyllium. Plus a heaped teaspoon of turmeric.

It was noted some years ago that the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease in India is about one tenth of Western societies. One study in rural North India reported an incidence of 0.62 % in those over the age of 55 years and 1.07% in those aged 65 and older. Compare that to 10% for 65 year olds in our society. There have been a number of reasons postulated as to why this should be. But one of the thoughts is that it is due to the curcumin found in turmeric and in India a huge amount of turmeric is consumed in curries on a daily basis.

In Alzheimer’s disease one of the hallmark findings, are of plaques in the brain made of a substance called beta amyloid. The body has it’s own defence system to try and get rid of this in the form of scavenging cells called macrophages. These travel around the brain trying to remove any amyloid it finds. One study looked at the effect of treating these macrophages with curcumin and found that the macrophages were then better able to gobble up the beta amyloid with an improvement rate of 50%.

Curcumin has potent anti-inflammatory and anti oxidant effects. It is thought that inflammation plays a role in the development of Alzheimer’s. This led to studies to see whether anti-inflammatory drugs, and or curcumin through it’s anti-inflammatory effect could be useful in treating beta amyloid build up. One study conducted at UCLA looked at the anti inflammatory effect of curcumin vs ibuprofen (a commonly used anti-inflammatory drug). Using rats with beta amyloid in their brains, both curcumin and the ibuprofen were shown to provide equivalent protection from the inflammatory damage caused by the beta amyloid. The curcumin reduced the number of plaques in the rat brains by up to 80% at low dose and the rats given the curcumin performed better on spatial memory tests compared to the control group. Curcumin can cross the blood brain barrier and binds to amyloid protein fragments, which can then no longer clump together to form plaques.