Westi walked under the soursop tree and past the lemon basil and dug up the root of a tall plant with his knife. “This is white turmeric.”
Instead of the orange color that I was used to seeing with turmeric I encountered in Peru, this was a curiously yellowish white. “What do you use that for?”
“It’s an antibiotic.” He looked to his right, cleared some grass and dug up another root. “Different type of turmeric. This is for the liver. Curcumin kandarisha we call it.
An even taller plant was next. Westi hauled it up to show me. The root grew in a huge bulb.
“One root is half a kilo of turmeric,” Westi said
Past the aloe and the tapioca he pulled up another kind of turmeric. “This is curcumin pandurata.” He shook the dirt off and broke one open. Lelir said, “It’s more fragrant. We use for anti-aging.”
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“Anti-aging? I’d be very interested to use that in my new center. How are you using it? Do you make it into a powder and put it in a capsule?”
“A facial scrub,” Lelir said. “But I also make it into a powder and add it to sugar cane juice. I’ll show you in the shop. It’s anti-aging, but sweet.”
“You grow a lot of this kind of turmeric. Look at that field!” I couldn’t see the end of it even with the zoom in my video camera. They must have had half a mile of turmeric growing …
When we got back to Lelir’s shop in the small town of Ubud in southern Bali, she gave me a “Jamu” class.” Jamu is the daily herbal tonic the Balinese use. Ni Wayan Lelir is a fifth-generation herbalist from a long family tradition.
She pulled out another kind of turmeric called curcuma longa.
“We don’t like to go to doctors. We don’t need chemicals. For everyone in the fields, we still use herbal medicine. We use the herbs surrounding us. Like for antibiotics, we use turmeric.”
 My friend Ni Wayan Lelir shows me the “mother” and “babies” of the turmeric root. |
“This is the turmeric root. This big part is the ‘mother’ root, and these are the ‘babies.’ We use the mother for medicine, and the babies for cooking. Why? Because they taste different. And the medicinal properties of the baby roots are less.
“Also, after so long, if we use the mother root for cooking it will taste like medicine to us!”
Westi has at least six different kinds of turmeric growing in his garden. It’s the single root that they’re most impressed with. And it’s a whole science. They know exactly how old the root is supposed to be and what to mix it with… and it’s central to a lot of the things they do.
Turmeric and it’s major compound curcumin are well known anti-inflammatories. The journal Family Practice did a study on turmeric and the researchers wrote simply: “Does turmeric relieve inflammatory conditions? Yes.”1
It has a combination of curcuminoids, volatile oils and proteins that make it anti-cancer, and it’s being looked at as a treatment for other inflammatory conditions like asthma and arthritis and high LDL cholesterol.
The USDA’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University in Boston did a study that found curcumin can suppress fat growth.2
It’s also being studied to treat Alzheimer’s disease. In an animal study, researchers were able to use turmeric to reduce the beta amyloid plaque that builds up on the brains of Alzheimer’s patients by 40 percent. The turmeric also reduced buildup of a harmful protein by 80 percent.3 That means curcumin could help you keep your memory longer.
If you want to benefit from this impressive root, too, the three easiest ways I know of
are to:
- Buy the root at an organic grocer. You can buy it in conventional ground form, or whole. If you’re going to buy it ground, make sure it’s all turmeric and not just some of the root ground up with curry powder.
- Use my new daily tonic that Lelir showed me how to make: https://alsearsmd.com/my-new-daily-tonic
- Take it as a supplement. Studies use up to 3 grams of extracted root daily. But there are some who believe that turmeric supplements aren’t as effective because they either aren’t absorbed very well or pass through your system too quickly.
Look for either a curcumin supplement that contains piperine, a black pepper extract that increases the absorbency of other compounds, or the optimized form of turmeric that is more absorbable. In fact, in the study I mentioned earlier, it was only the optimized form of turmeric that reduced the plaque associated with Alzheimer’s.
I recommend you get 500 mg of turmeric’s major compound curcumin each day.
1. White, B., Judkins, D.Z.. “Clinical Inquiry. Does turmeric relieve inflammatory conditions?” J. Fam. Pract. March 2011;60(3):155-6
2. Grossman,, A., “Turmeric Extract Suppresses Fat Tissue Growth in Rodent Models,” Tufts University, news.tufts.edu May 18, 2009
3. Shytle, R.D., et al, “Optimized Turmeric Extract Reduces β-Amyloid and Phosphorylated Tau Protein Burden in Alzheimer’s Transgenic Mice,” Curr. Alzheimer Res. Aug. 30, 2011