Let Food Be your Medicine… pass the Curry!

Dr. Weeks’ Comment:

No longer does healthy food need to be “seeds and weeds” or other bland or husky and gritty cuisine.

Now we find that most everything that stakes a claim on this amazing planet has beneficial qualities (coconut oil, bee venom, potentized poison ivy etc.) including the edible plants of which we now focus on curcumin (the seed from which we make curries) and its cholesterol lowering effect. Watch for the FDA to make curry a drug like they did with red yeast ….

Happy New Year!

Curcumin induces changes in expression of genes involved in cholesterol homeostasis.
Authors: Peschel D, Koerting R, Nass N.
Source: J Nutr Biochem. 2006 May 16

Abstract: Curcuminoids, the yellow pigments of curcuma, exhibit anticarcinogenic, antioxidative and hypocholesterolemic activities. To understand the molecular basis for the hypocholesterolemic effects, we examined the effects of curcumin on hepatic gene expression, using the human hepatoma cell line HepG2 as a model system. Curcumin treatment caused an up to sevenfold, concentration-dependent increase in LDL-receptor mRNA, whereas mRNAs of the genes encoding the sterol biosynthetic enzymes HMG CoA reductase and farnesyl diphosphate synthase were only slightly increased at high curcumin concentrations where cell viability was reduced. Expression of the regulatory SREBP genes was moderately increased, whereas mRNAs of the PPARalpha target genes CD36/fatty acid translocase and fatty acid binding protein 1 were down-regulated. LXRalpha expression and accumulation of mRNA of the LXRalpha target gene ABCg1 were increased at low curcumin concentrations. Although curcumin strongly inhibited alkaline phosphatase activity, an activation of a retinoic acid response element reporter employing secreted alkaline phosphatase was observed. These changes in gene expression are consistent with the proposed hypocholesterolemic effect of curcumin.

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