Like many people with diabetes, I try to follow my doctor’s advice by eating well from a diabetic food list that suits my personal tastes and preferences. But because I have not quite been able to get my blood sugar levels totally under control, I also keep looking for additional diabetic friendly foods to include in my diabetic diet that may give me an extra edge in an endless battle.
Turmeric
One such food that I have been reading about of late is Turmeric, a well-known spice used in India for thousands of years, but also now popular world wide in the kitchen as an ingredient in cooking. Although for people with diabetes, more emphasis will likely be paid to turmeric’s reputation regarding its touted medicinal properties. For the diabetic, they may be more important, or at least be an incentive to incorporate turmeric into their diabetic diet.
Turmeric has been used in the ancient and traditional form of medicine from India called Ayervedic for thousands of years. Ayervedic medicine emphasizes lifestyle and dietary approaches to good health and treating illness, and incorporates the use of herbs and other plant foods. Part of it’s philosophy is to prevent disease through eating the right foods. Not unlike the suggestion by Hippocrates to “Let food be your medicine”.
Turmeric is the vivid yellow spice used in curry and gives the bright color to mustard. The active property of turmeric is curcumin, known for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Several scientific studies have confirmed its powerful anti-inflammatory properties and the benefits of its use in treating rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory ailments. In their treatment, curcumin was found to have an effect equal to powerful prescription drugs and over-the-counter ant-inflammatory products — but without any of the toxic effects of those drugs.
Inflammation is thought to be associated with obesity and the onset of type-2 diabetes and from experiments carried out on obese mice, it appears that turmeric can possibly lessen insulin resistance and prevent type-2 diabetes by minimizing the inflammatory response generated by obesity. That’s good for the mice . . .
A video called “Turmeric for Diabetes”
For a good description and depiction of the research mentioned above, I recommend the video that can be accessed by visiting You Tube Video. The research discussed took place in 2008 and the comment was made that the research team planned to do research with humans, as yet I have not found any update on such research, but as the video suggests, it wouldn’t do any harm to spice up your meals with turmeric.
So that’s OK for diabetic and obese mice, but what about us humans?
An interesting observation has been made that turmeric and other curry powder ingredients, such as cayenne, cumin, and garlic, may help promote improved blood circulation. It has been noted that the incidence of blood clots in countries that use curry in foods is much lower than in the United States where curry is used far less. It has been theorized that the curry ingredients have a property that prevents platelets in the blood from sticking to each other and that would, in turn, also prevent the formation of a blood clot that could otherwise lead to a heart attack or stroke.
On the website of the University of Maryland Medical Center there is an article describing turmeric. After some encouraging and positive comments about the possible benefits of turmeric in relation to osteoarthritis, atherosclerosis, and cancer, the entry on diabetes merely summarized the above mentioned studies by saying that when researchers gave turmeric to laboratory animals with diabetes, their blood sugar levels were lowered, and so were their blood cholesterol levels. An added remark was that the researchers cannot yet determine whether turmeric would be helpful in treating people with diabetes.
Another positive for turmeric as a diabetic menu item are the reports claiming that curry ingredients help prevent heart disease, a common health complication facing all people who have diabetes. Heart disease is the primary cause of death in the diabetic population of America. A well known cardiologist stated in his book words to the effect that “If you tell me you are a diabetic, I will tell you that you will die of heart disease”. Blunt, perhaps too blunt for comfort.
If taken as a supplement in capsule, the recommended dose I have seen published is to take One (1) 300 mg capsule up to 3 times daily. Turmeric and curcumin are considered safe when taken at the recommended doses as are the amounts found in foods. However, a caution is in order.
As a precaution
Anyone with diabetes should talk to their doctor before taking turmeric supplements. The fact that turmeric may lower blood sugar levels just may cause a problem when it is taken at the same time as diabetes medications, and might possibly cause a situation of low blood sugars and at an extreme, may bring on a hypoglycemic event.
For pregnant and breastfeeding women: while it is safe to eat foods that contain turmeric, turmeric supplements should not be taken.
About asking the doctor
Having said that it might be wise to ask the doctor whether it is OK to do so before adopting new specialized or exotic food items that might interfere with current medications that are being prescribed, I would like to comment that many doctors do not really know the answers to such questions. When I raised such an issue with my doctor, who generally supports the use of vitamins and mineral supplements, his humorous, and I assume honest response, was “How should I know, I’m only a doctor!”
My own solution as a type-2 diabetic
From the anecdotal comments and from the research reports, I suspect that some people would benefit from the use of turmeric although that may not be the case for everyone, since at least in some respects, every individual is unique. My solution is that I am going add curry to the diabetic menu and to eat more curry dishes, I like them anyway so it should not be difficult to do.
Go to List of Topics for this website