What Is Turmeric Good For? Turmeric doesn’t just look good—although its unique deep yellow color sets it apart from other spices—it is also incredibly good for you. The crux of the potency of turmeric lies in its use as an anti-inflammatory agent. Modern stresses on our bodies have put our immune systems in “scramble” mode nearly 24/7. This means that your body is primed and ready to respond to potential irritants by inflaming.
Here are several potential conditions that you may have that are most likely caused by an overactive inflammatory response: fatigue, digestive problems, red eyes, and irritated skin. The fact that all of these conditions sound so common is indicative of the problems we have with a traditionally Western over-processed diet. The good news, though, is that adding turmeric to your diet can go a long way in helping you fight an overactive inflammatory response and get your health back on track.
What Is Turmeric Good For?
The root of turmeric’s potency in helping your health is in a compound called curcumin, which is found in turmeric. This compound gives turmeric its antioxidant power and its potent anti-inflammatory effects.
Before you think that turmeric is just some kind of fad or some inconclusive form of alternative medicine like homeopathy, there have been more than 5,000 studies performed on the effects of turmeric, and they have conclusively found that it is just about as effective as other medications in reducing inflammation in your body.
The benefits from turmeric do not just stop there, however. It has also been shown to encourage healthy weight loss. Curcumin also has effects on how hungry we feel, and participants in studies linking turmeric with weight loss found that those who consumed turmeric lost 2.6 times more weight than those in the control group.
Further, as another result of its anti-inflammatory properties, turmeric can also help support healthy joints in your body. More recent evidence now suggests that turmeric can also help promote your heart health—it is beneficial in making sure that your entire cardiovascular system stays healthy.
Finally, these newer studies have also found that it is possible for turmeric to quite literally improve your mood. To sum all of this up, turmeric has properties to support the health of your body against the unhealthiness of many modern diets.
How To Use Turmeric Video
From the video: Today we’re gonna talk about why turmeric is healthy, ways to make it absorb better so you can get all the health benefits, and then a few of my favorite ways to use turmeric. Most of you are probably used to seeing the ground turmeric, which is the most common form, it’s what you use in recipes. But this is a turmeric root, which is what it actually looks like before it’s ground and dried.
I have five reasons for you that turmeric is a healthy addition to your diet. So number one is that it’s anti-inflammatory. The active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin, which is a powerful and very potent anti-inflammatory agent.
The Western diet is really, really high in things that cause chronic inflammation like alcohol, sugars, processed foods, all that bad stuff, and doctors think that chronic inflammation is called the silent killer, so eating turmeric helps prevent that inflammation, which will keep you a little bit healthier and alive longer hopefully. Turmeric health fact number two is that it’s great for your joint health.
When we have that chronic inflammation in our bodies our joints get swollen and we lose the mobility and they’re just not very healthy joints. Because curcumin is that active ingredient in turmeric that reduces inflammation, when we reduce that inflammation in our joints they are healthier and we feel better.
Turmeric fact number three is that it helps support an overall healthy cardiovascular system, which is our heart and blood and all that good stuff. When our blood vessels, the lining of them, isn’t working properly we can’t form blood clots and we also have a higher blood pressure.
Curcumin or turmeric actually helps work on the lining of our blood vessels and promotes health in them, therefore promoting an overall heart healthy function. And here we are at fact number four, we’re almost done. So turmeric fun fact number four is that it can help encourage healthy cholesterol levels.
That chronic stress that we talked about is also called oxidative stress and researchers have said that that oxidative stress makes our cholesterol go higher and because turmeric is anti-inflammatory and reduces chronic inflammation it reduces that oxidative stress and therefore can help promote healthy cholesterol levels.
Here we are at turmeric fact number five. So turmeric can help with symptoms of bloating, gas and indigestion. Turmeric can also stimulate your gallbladder, which produces bile and helps you break down food, therefore it helps aid in better digestion. Know you know the answer to the question what is turmeric good for!
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