Curcumin longa, vita brevis Turmeric has a host of medicinal uses
By Dong de los Reyes, Contributing Writer
Turmeric (Curcumin longa) sports such unlikely names as laoag (likely an adopted name for the bustling city diay ti amianan), calauag (a town in Quezon Province south of Manila is a namesake), and luyang dilaw (a plaza in Pandacan, Manila must have taken its name after it) or literally "yellow ginger." Unlike pungent true-brown ginger, which has grown ubiquitous in Philippine cookery, turmeric hardly turns up as favored spice or must-include condiment in our cuisine. It takes warming up to turmeric's slightly bitter, musky astringent flavor a tad close to mouthwash. A teaspoon of it crushed finely is all that's needed to infuse a yellow tinge to a pot of porridge. The late painter-restaurateur Perdigon Vocalan of Angono, Rizal, celebrated turmeric's subtle mouthwash flavor in such dishes as turmeric-flavored stewed eels, crucifix fish (kanduli), or mudfish. The more daring among us would spike their chicken tinola with a bit of turmeric rhizome, cut into julienne strips and plunked along with other ingredients for sautéing. Turmeric isn't prized for culinary uses in this neck of the woods. Rustic elders wracked with arthritis, rheumatism, or sprained ligaments salve afflicted parts with turmeric paste in coconut oil. That brings instant relief. Powdered turmeric is sprinkled on wounds and ulcers for rapid healing, or over live coals and the fumes inhaled for asthma relief. A teaspoon stirred into a glass of warm milk also relieves bronchial asthma and coughs. In India-the world's leading turmeric supplier-where the plant is called haldi, turmeric is a must-include component of curry. For millenniums, the rhizome has been prized as a cure-all in traditional Ayurvedic medicine, why, yogis and fakirs who assume meditation postures likely to stretch ligaments, tendons and all to snap like French fries, they relieve pains and strains with a generous daubing of turmeric paste on affected portions. As locals have it, turmeric has beneficial effects in the liver, which include "stimulating the flow of bile, protecting against damage from toxins, and improving the metabolism of fats. By enhancing liver function, turmeric helps to cleanse the blood of toxins and impurities. It has been shown to lower harmful cholesterol levels, to inhibit blood clotting by blocking prostaglandin production and to help prevent as well as remedy atherosclerosis, thus playing a significant role in the prevention of heart and arterial disease." A recent report in Scientific American cites "the biologically active components of turmeric-curcumin and related compounds called curcuminoids-as having antioxidant, antiinflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties, with potential activity against cancer, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, and other chronic maladies." Pointing up the intense interest in tur-meric's curative properties in wound healing, blood cleansing, and stomach ailments-and its medicinal history that dates back 5,000 years-the report cites that "in 2005 nearly 300 scientific and technical papers referenced curcumin in the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database, compared with about 100 just five years earlier." In the 1980s Bharat Aggarwal, a former scientist at Genentech, and his team were the first to purify two important immune molecules-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha and beta. These have been identified as potential anticancer compounds. "These molecules can, in fact, kill cancer cells when deployed in localized areas, but when circulated widely in the bloodstream, they take on different properties, acting as potent tumor promoters. The TNFs activate an important protein, nuclear factor kappa B (NF kappa B), which can then turn on a host of genes involved in inflammation and cell proliferation," the report notes. Adds the report: "In 1989 Aggarwal moved to the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and sought for compounds that might quell inflammation and have an anticancer effect. Remembering from his youth in India that turmeric was an antiinflammatory in the Ayurvedic literature, he decided to give the spice a try. 'We took some from the kitchen and threw it on some cells,' he remembers. 'We couldn't believe it. It completely blocked TNF and NF kappa B'." With such startling finding, Aggarwal went on to publish studies showing that blocking the NF kappa B pathway with curcumin stems replication and spread of various types of cancer cells. Aggarwal's work became a jumping-off point for early clinical trials at M. D. Anderson using curcumin as an adjunct therapy to treat pancreatic cancer and multiple myeloma. Large clinical trials have yet to be conducted to prove curcumin's efficacy against cancer and other diseases but M. D. Anderson has began promoting curcumin use-a daily dose of eight grams a day for cancer patients. However, a 2004 study in the Department of Molecular Genetics at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science points out that curcumin is absorbed poorly from the gut into the bloodstream and is also broken down in the body rapidly-a patient taking eight grams would probably end up with a concentration in blood plasma no higher than about 2.0 micromolar. About 5,000 years of turmeric's usage in traditional Indian medicine may be taken aside. While studies have shown curcumin and related compounds called curcuminoids as "having antioxidant, antiinflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties, with potential activity against cancer, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease and other chronic maladies," ailing sufferers may have to wait for conclusive results from large clinical trials before pigging out on turmeric. It probably won't hurt though splurging on eels, crucifix fish (kanduli), or mudfish stewed in turmeric-it's an old-fashioned yummy turned up at Perdigon Vocalan's Balaw-Balaw Restaurant in Angono, Rizal. M |
