If your cooking routine doesn’t already include a healthy sprinkling of spices, you might need to check your memory. And then hurry up, update your spice cabinet, and get some turmeric into your regular rotation of cooking accessories.
According to recent research coming out of UCLA, curcumin, the main compound found in turmeric, can seriously give you a memory boost that’ll have you improving your mental health and prevent memory loss.
The study found that the colorful curried spice can improve memory and can even cut a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. A major memory boost in a flavorful and delicious spice.
Researchers looked at people between the ages of 50 and 90 years old and had half of the study population take a curcumin supplement twice daily over a year-and-a-half, and were tested on their memory every six months.
They had brain scans that would track their Alzheimer’s risk and overall found that their brain function increased by 28 percent and experienced less overall depression compared to those who didn’t have the turmeric addition in their regular diet.
But let’s cut the turmeric-curcumin confusion ASAP.
While the two aren’t entirely interchangeable, they are intricately linked. And here’s the specific difference: Turmeric is the spice itself. It’s what you should look for at the grocery store, and what the name on the label will read, and what will be listed on the ingredients list in any turmeric-featured recipe.
Curcumin, on the other hand, is the chemical compound that’s within turmeric. So, as is the case in this study, the compound can be extracted from turmeric and you can have curcumin without turmeric. But you can’t have turmeric without curcumin. Follow the path? We have a rectangle-square situation here.
So while you can find and take curcumin supplements to get the mental health benefits, you can also naturally add turmeric into your diet to get the same benefits (which also include fighting inflammation and other diseases).
You can embrace your turmeric tea, add it to a fall-spiced smoothie bowl, or jump aboard the golden latte trend.
Your brain could be all the better for it.