Did you know one of curcumin benefits includes preventing Alzheimer’s?

Researchers at Warwick University believe preventing Alzheimer’s may come sooner than you think – with preliminary studies showing positive results of curcumin benefits.

The natural wonder ingredient, curcumin, is widely known to have many health benefits, and now researchers from Warwick university are well underway to proving just how curcumin benefits could overcome autophagy and possibly play a role in preventing Alzheimer’s disease.

Curcumin, turmeric and intermittent fasting

The study has the hope that curcumin benefits and the naturally-occurring compounds found especially in turmeric can – when combined with intermittent fasting – prevent the build-up of damaging protein fragments that form between nerve cells in the brain and cause neurological problems.

It’s thought that these fragments may be the product of the brain’s self-defence process and that their presence is a symptom of the disease.

In a healthy brain, these fragments are broken down and eliminated, but problems occur if they begin to accumulate and form the hard, insoluble amyloid plaques known to be one of the major symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

Previous research regarding curcumin benefits

Previous related research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2008 found that Biocurcumax, a patented extract available as a food supplement, helped prevent further build-up of these amyloid plaques and subsequently was approved by the FDA for investigational Therapy.

The importance of curcumin seems to hinge on its ability to kick-start the cleansing process that otherwise can take up to eighteen hours of fasting for the body to begin by itself. The studies to date have shown that when curcumin is present in the bloodstream in potent amounts for a long-enough period of time it can help autophagy start much sooner.

Biocurcumax is a food supplement designed to allow active curcumin to be retained in the body for more than eight hours.

Later research later conducted with the University of Rome in 2015 showed Biocurcumax was able to reverse the dysfunction that sometimes occurs in autophagy, the self-cleansing process.

The potential of preventing Alzheimer’s and other neurological conditions

New studies at the University of Warwick will now seek to show the actual extent to which curcumin benefits and pomegranates can induce autophagy and remove the damaged cells.

Should these prove successful, they will progress to a human clinical trial to demonstrate the efficacy of the solution.

Crucially, curcumin is thought to also have a positive effect on apoptosis – the normal, controlled death of billions of cells in the adult body every day. Curcumin benefits also includes restoring and maintaining a healthy mitochondria, the ‘battery unit’ of every cell.

Philipose adds: “Nature provides us with curcumin and pomegranates that can be used as hacks to induce and kick start the self-cleansing mechanism in the body. Adjunct to a fasting diet, we may have a pathway for preventing the disease.”

References

1. Arjuna Receives U.S. Patent for Investigational Alzheimer’s Therapy [ALZHEIMER’S NEWS TODAY, 2014]
2. BCM-95 and (2-hydroxypropyl)-β-cyclodextrin reverse autophagy dysfunction and deplete stored lipids in Sap C-deficient fibroblasts [HUMAN MOLECULAR GENETICS, 2015]
3. Examining the potential clinical value of curcumin in the prevention and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (BRITISH JOURNAL OF NUTRITION, 2016]
4. Facts for the media [ALZHEIMER’S SOCIETY, 2019]