"Heart of Gold: Turmeric vs. Exercise"
The endothelium is the inner lining of our blood vessels.
Laid end-to-end the endothelial cells from a single human
would wrap more than four times around the world.
And it's not just like an inert layer; it's highly metabolically active.
I've talked about how sensitive our endothelium is
to oxidation and inflammation.
And if we don't take care of it endothelial dysfunction may set us up
for heart disease or a stroke.
Are we ready to heed our endothelium's early warning signal?
Well, if it's all about oxidation and inflammation,
then fruits and vegetables should help. And indeed they do.
Each daily serving of fruits or vegetables
was associated with a 6% improvement in endothelial function.
Now these fruit and vegetable-associated improvements in endothelial function
are in contrast with several negative vitamin C pill studies
that failed to show a benefit.
It can be concluded that the positive findings of the fruit and vegetable study
is not just because of any one nutrient in fruits and veggies.
Rather than searching for the single magic bullet micronutrient,
a more practical approach is likely to consider whole foods.
Thus, increasing fruit and vegetable consumption
is likely to have numerous beneficial effects
due to synergistic effects of all the wonderful things in plants.
Exercise helps too, but what type of exercise helps best?
Patients were randomized into four groups:
aerobic exercise (cycling for an hour a day),
resistance training (using weights and elastic bands), both, or neither.
The aerobic group kicked butt. The resistance group kicked butt.
And the aerobic and resistance group kicked butt as well,
compared to those who sat on their butts.
Note that your endothelium doesn't care if you're on a bike or lifting weights,
as long as you're getting physical activity.
And getting regular activity.
If you stop exercising, your endothelial function plummets.
Antioxidant pills didn't work. What about anti-inflammatory pills?
Drug companies aren't going to give up that easy.
After all, there's only so much you can make selling salad.
For those who prefer plants to pills, one of the most anti-inflammatory foods
is the spice turmeric.
Researchers in Japan recently compared the endothelial benefits of exercise
to that of curcumin, the yellow pigment in turmeric and curry powder.
About a teaspoon a day's worth of turmeric for eight weeks
compared to 30 to 60 minutes of aerobic exercise a day.
Which group improved their endothelial function more?
The group that did neither experienced no benefit,
but the exercise group significantly boosted their endothelial function,
and so did the curcumin group.
The magnitude of the improvement achieved by curcumin treatment
was comparable to that obtained with exercise.
Therefore, regular ingestion of curcumin
could be a preventive measure
against cardiovascular disease in postmenopausal women.
Furthermore, their results suggest that curcumin may be
a potential alternative treatment for patients who are unable to exercise,
but ideally we'd do both.
In this study they looked at central arterial hemodynamics.
Basically, if our endothelium is impaired, our arteries stiffen,
making it harder for our heart to pump.
But compared to placebo, we can drop
that pressure down with turmeric curcumin or exercise,
but if you combine both, then you really start rocking and rolling.
They conclude that these findings suggest that regular endurance exercise
combined with daily curcumin ingestion
may reduce the pressure against which your heart has to fight
to a greater extent than one or the other.
So healthy eating and exertion for our endothelium.