Through study, scientists have found that the common spices used in Indian foods may be just the right option for those that suffer from Alzheimer’s. By doing a small study on a group of seniors, researchers found out that curcumin, which is a chemical that’s found in curry as well as turmeric can be helpful. This chemical works by helping to get rid of amyloid beta. Amyloid beta may be important to remove because it’s the plaques that those that suffer from Alzheimer’s have.
When curcumin is used, it will stimulate your immune system. By enhancing the immune system’s function by removing amyloid beta, may lessens the damage that this plaque causes. It works quite simply by stimulating your body’s macrophages, which are small elements in your body that travel around and reduce the waste throughout it. By removing these elements, you could see improvements.
Scientists at USLA/VA did the work. They created a drug that was derived from the chemicals in curcumin. When they used this drug in a 24 hour period on macrophages from several Alzheimer’s diseased individuals, they saw an increase in the amount of waste that they were able to pick up and ingest. They did this also with healthy individuals and saw no benefiting in the amount of amyloid beta being ingested. These studies were done on samples from patients, rather than in live clinical use.
Those individual’s samples that did show some improvement were younger and believed to be suffering from an earlier form of Alzheimer’s. There is much study still to be done, but the fact that a natural product could help your natural immune system to function better is something that doctors are impressed by and want to learn more about. Through further testing, they hope to be able to answer the questions of why this happens and then to be able to see evidence of its effect on actual patients as well.
To read more, visit http://www.seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Alzheimers/6-10-05-ChemicalFromCurry.htm
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