Turmeric key to longer life, say AU researchers

Found in most Indian homes and traditionally revered for its medicinal properties, Turmeric can be a key to live a longer life, if the recent research findings by a team of Allahabad University (AU) biochemists are to be believed.

The team, led by professor S I Rizvi, says that curcumin, the main chemical present in turmeric, can slow the process of aging due to its capability to restrict calories. The findings have been published recently in international journal Biologia Futura of the Springer Nature publication.

Sharing more details, Prof Rizvi said his team created a model with the help of rats that showed a higher rate of aging. Normally, rats have a lifespan of two years but the rats that were experimented on lived for just six months. Working on this model, it was easier to test the anti-aging effect of curcumin, he added.

The AU scientists are of the view that the most effective anti-aging strategy is caloric restriction or a condition of eating less. It was found that rats given less food had a longer lifespan. However, it is very difficult to implement this strategy for a long time on humans with food being a crucial part of human lifestyle.

Prof Rizvi said to circumvent this problem scientists were working on a class of drugs that are known for calorie restriction mimetics. In common terms, it means that this type of drugs mimics the effects of caloric restriction in the body even though the person may have eaten a full appetite.

In a series of elegantly designed experiments, the research team of AU explored the use of curcumin, a chemical naturally found in the common spice popularly known as haldi or turmeric.

On the lab rats, the research team tested the effects of curcumin on several parameters of blood which are known to change during the process of aging.

“Curcumin showed a very strong effect in protecting the body from several age dependent alterations. The experiments were conducted to find out how curcumin worked and the research team concluded that curcumin worked as a caloric restriction mimetic,” he said.

In other words, curcumin worked as a drug that gave the same benefits that are normally associated with eating less or restricting calories, he added.

Prof Rizvi said that these findings open new areas of research in anti-aging medicine. They also justify the high usage of ‘Haldi’ in Indian cuisine and in several traditional systems of medicine.

Blurb: The AU scientists are of the view that the most effective anti-aging strategy is calorie restriction or a condition of eating less. Curcumin, which is found in turmeric, works as a drug that gives the same benefits that are normally associated with eating less, they say.