Trendy turmeric ‘can help to ease arthritis’
IT’S the latest health fad – present in everything from soy lattes to vegan cakes.
But there may be something in the health craze for turmeric after all.
A scientifically robust study has found that the golden yellow spice may be an effective painkiller for arthritis.
Turmeric, which is widely used as a flavouring in South Asian cooking, has been used as a traditional Eastern medicine for centuries.
However, it is only in recent years that modern science has begun to take the spice seriously as a drug.
Turmeric, which is ground from the dried root of a plant called Curcuma longa, has been tested in recent years as a treatment for lung disease,
Alzheimer’s, heart disease and depression.
And growing evidence suggests it also has an impact on some cancers, thought to be because it stops the disease’s cells dividing and spreading.
Curcumin – the active ingredient in turmeric – is a polyphenol which has significant antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties.
For the latest trial, experts at the University of Tasmania, Australia, randomly assigned 70 patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis and swelling inside the joint to receive either two capsules a day of turmeric or a placebo for 12 weeks.
The study found that patients taking the turmeric supplements reported less pain than those in the placebo group – and they suffered no side effects.
Those prescribed the turmeric also took fewer other pain medications than those on the dummy treatment.
Scans revealed no differences in the structural features of the knee joint, which suggested that the impact was on the reception of pain, rather than on the physical disease itself.
Given there are no effective treatments for osteoarthritis and that painkillers barely work, researchers said it was worth taking the results seriously.
The scientists called for much larger trials to definitively assess the clinical significance of their findings, which have been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal.