The Tips-On-Tea guide to Turmeric!
Turmeric is rapidly emerging as a leading superfood but it’s been used for its healing properties in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine for thousands of years. The benefits of turmeric are far-reaching with recent headlines claiming it can fight off flu, aid digestive complaints and even discourage cancer development. You’ve probably got this golden spice in your cupboard but you might not have come across it fresh before! So, here is the Tipson Tea guide to Turmeric.
Fresh turmeric root (rhizome) looks like a ginger root with brown peel and bright orange flesh. Whichever way you decide to use it, you’ll soon reap rewards. The main active ingredient is the yellow pigment, curcumin. This is really the spice’s superstar component, responsible for many of turmeric’s benefits!
One of the biggest health benefits that turmeric brings, emphasised even more during times like this, is turmeric’s ability to boost our immunity. Our immune system is pretty amazing, selecting the best response to potentially hazardous bugs and viruses that come in its way. Turmeric helps your body modulate the immune response, enhancing antibody activity, activating immune cells and dampening over-active, pro-inflammatory messengers called cytokines.
Secondly, with its antioxidant properties, turmeric may help to protect skin cells and may even fire up our body’s natural antioxidant responses. As our first line of defense, skin can take a hit and needs a bit of extra goodness. Antioxidants in turmeric seem to help protect our skin cells from excessive levels of damaging compounds found in the air, our food, pesticides and plastic packaging and so may help slow the signs of ageing; a plus for those of us with busy jobs in busy cities!
Thirdly, turmeric is an amazing aid for digestion. If you don’t suffer from poor digestion yourself, you almost definitely know someone who does. The gut is highly complex and incredibly sensitive to our lifestyle – a poor diet, alcohol consumption, stress levels and medications (such as antibiotics) can take their toll on our digestive health, tipping the body out of balance and leaving us feeling bloated and pretty miserable. Turmeric’s anti-inflammatory properties are good for our gut, and some scientists have found it helpful in discouraging abnormal cell activity that may lead to the development of polyps, fibroids and even bowel cancer. It may also help encourage the right balance of bacteria, which is essential for pretty much everything in the body.
So, how can you include turmeric in your diet? Here are our top three recommendations!
In your meals: Both fresh and ground turmeric make great additions to meals, especially curries and Moroccan dishes like tagines. As well as the health benefits, who could resist the enticing golden colour that makes turmeric a store cupboard essential.
Juices: Such a quick and easy way to give your juice an extra superfood boost. We love carrots, ginger, lemon, turmeric and beetroot for a lovely winter boost.
Tea: Turmeric tea is one of the easiest ways to consume the golden spice! You just need fresh turmeric root, a little lemon, ginger, cayenne and honey. At Tipson, we love our turmeric so much, we have an entire range of organic turmeric herbal infusions. Delicious!
Turmeric really is proving to be a wonder spice and with more ongoing research, it seems to be worthy of the hype. It is a herb that if utilised correctly can bring about numerous health and wellness benefits. Time to get a golden glow and add a bit more of this spice to our lives!