Turmeric: Raw Root, Powder, Tea, Or…?

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

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In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝Is turmeric infused water better or chewing half an inch of raw turmeric better? I am trying to work on my immunity as this year I have suffered the most with my allergies in the last 20 years. In case you can guide me, I will be thankful.❞

Great question! First of all, a quick recap of the properties of turmeric (and its relevant active compound, curcumin)

Let’s do a quick run-down:

• It fights inflammation, and thus helps fight many diseases where inflammation is a factor (ranging from atherosclerosis to arthritis to Alzheimer’s and more)
• It has powerful antioxidant effects too
• It boosts brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) and thus improves memory and attention
• It helps protect against heart disease…
  • …and can give a 65% decreased risk of experiencing a heart attack
• It can help prevent cancer, and reduce cancerous lesions by 40%
• It’s also good against depression
• It even slows aging

If you take curcumin with black pepper, it allows your body to use the curcumin around 2,000% better. This goes whether you’re cooking with both, or take them as a supplement (they’re commonly sold as a combo-capsule for this reason).

Note: you mentioned an infusion or chewing the root, so perhaps you are not having black pepper with either of those. That’s fine, but try to have it near to black pepper (for example, perhaps while cooking a meal in which you use black pepper, so you take the turmeric and then you eat the meal).

Extra note: in fact, that’s ideal, because curcumin is fat-soluble, so having it with (or near in time to) consuming fats (such as perhaps used in cooking) is a great way to do it.

Curcumin vs allergies, specifically

For any thinking “that wasn’t on the list”… It was hidden! It comes with curcumin’s anti-inflammatory and antioxidant powers.

See for example:

• Modulation of the Immune Response to Allergies Using Alternative Functional Foods ← turmeric is one of the functional foods discussed
• Turmeric extract alleviates airway inflammation via oxidative stress-driven MAPKs/MMPs pathway ← this is important to dial down an inappropriate immune response, e.g. an allergy
• Dietary Polyphenols, Plant Metabolites, and Allergic Disorders: A Comprehensive Review ← again, turmeric is a key player
• Development of fast-dissolving sublingual nanofibers containing allergen and curcumin for immune response modulation in a mouse model of allergic rhinitis ← allergic rhinitis = “seasonal allergies” and similar respiratory allergic responses
• DES/O microemulsion for solubilizing and delivering curcumin via the nasal administration to treat acute asthma ← similar mechanism of action

food vs supplement

You didn’t ask this, but it’ll be helpful for understanding if we quickly cover this first.

• Turmeric root is just that: a root, which contains abundant phytochemicals, and/but is not at all standardized in dosage
• Curcumin extract, on the other hand, have been standardized, optimized, and are metabolized much more quickly

…which latter can be a problem, because it’s been taken apart and used for scrap metabolites faster than the body could actually make use of the curcumin as-is.

The black pepper hack fixes this, by the way, because of how it improves absorption.

You may be thinking: isn’t this going to cause the same problem you were just talking about, and cause it to be metabolized too quickly? And the answer is: no! How piperine works is almost the opposite; it protects the curcumin in the turmeric from our digestive enzymes, and thus allows them to get absorbed without being broken down too quickly—thus increasing the bioavailability by slowing the process down.

In short: food is best, but supplements are fine for anyone whose local supermarkets don’t sell turmeric root. Make sure to get it from a vendor who has transparency about their processes and has reputable certifications against heavy metal contamination though, because that’s especially common in cheap turmeric/curcumin supplements.

The different ways of taking it

There are a few more options than those you mentioned, so let’s quickly note:

• Infusion: the chopped/grated root is steeped in hot water, and then we drink the hot water (sometimes called “turmeric tea”) and discard the solids
• Suspension: the dried, powdered root is mixed in water, which we then drink in its entirety
• Decoction: the finely chopped/grated root is steeped in hot water, and then we consume this in its entirety, which most people don’t find pleasant
• Mastication only: chewing the root, spitting out the fibrous remnants
• Solid ingestion: eating the root

All of these will allow you to gain the benefits of curcumin (wherever that yellow-red pigment goes, so goes the curcumin), but only those which include consuming the solids will give you the full benefit (as otherwise, you are discarding a large amount of the curcumin with the solids that you discard).

So, we can remove both of the methods that you mentioned (infusion and chewing, assuming you meant chewing only, and not eating).

Things tend to lose potency with drying and grinding processes, not to mention long-term storage, so we can also remove suspension from the list.

That leaves decoction and solid ingestion. Since solid ingestion is not comfortable for most people without cooking the root, that leaves decoction as the superior method unless you personally are happy to just eat raw turmeric root.

However!

Out of the two you presented, infusion can be improved if a) you make the infusion very strong, by grating the root before steeping, and letting it steep for a good while, and b) if practical, throw the grated root (after pouring the tea) into a dish where its flavor will be appropriate. If this seems strange, like throwing a waste product into your meal, then remember that that’s only a matter of convention: physically, what it is is cooked (boiling is cooking!) grated turmeric, nothing more nor less.

At the end of the day though, the way that works best will be the way that you enjoy most (or if that’s not an option, dislike least), and thus will do more often.

Want to know more?

Check out:

Turmeric (Curcumin) Dos and Don’ts With Dr. Kim

Enjoy!