Could you imagine a common spice that is actually proven to help you lose weight? Well, it may not be so far off for us wanting to lose a bit of excess fat! A recent study has shown that curcumin, the major polyphenol found in turmeric, seems to reduce weight gain in mice and suppress the growth of fat tissue in mice and in cell models. Researchers at Tufts fed mice high fat diets supplemented with curcumin and examined cell cultures saturated with curcumin. And based on the data, curcumin appears to suppress angiogenic activity (weight gain results from growth and expansion of fat tissue, which cannot happen unless new blood vessels form, called angiogenesis) in the fat tissue of mice fed high fat diets. It sounds quite exciting but the results need to be verified and replicated in humans because no studies have been done yet.
The study went like this: mice were fed a high fat diets for 12 weeks and the high fat diet of one group was supplemented with 500 mg of curcumin/ kg diet; the other group got no curcumin. They found that though both groups ate the same amount of food, mice fed the curcumin supplemented diet did not gain as much weight as mice that were not fed curcumin. They suspected that curcumin appears to be responsible for total lower body fat in the group that received supplementation and a suppression of microvessel density in fat tissue, a sign of less blood vessel growth and thus less expansion of fat was observed. Lower blood cholesterol levels and fat in the liver of those mice was also seen. Curcumin also appeared to interfere with expression of two genes, which contributed to angiogenesis progression in both cell and rodent models. Of course the mechanism by which curcumin affects fat tissue must be investigated in a randomized, clinical trial involving humans. But there’s certainly no harm in upping your turmeric intake in the meantime, is there?