Popular spice shows promise as diabetes treatment — it’s probably already in your pantry

Could this be the golden ticket for diabetes patients?

Over 40.1 million Americans — roughly 12% of the US population — have diabetes, a chronic condition characterized by consistently elevated blood sugar.

Type 1 diabetes, often diagnosed in childhood, is an autoimmune disease where the pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin to use sugar for energy. Type 2 diabetes, which is more common in adults, is strongly tied to insulin resistance and obesity.

Now, researchers from the Florida Institute of Technology have identified a popular spice that could help stave off heart damage caused by diabetes.

Curcumin gives turmeric, a staple in Indian and South Asian cuisine, its golden color. It also boasts powerful anti-inflammatory effects.

“Curcumin acts as more than a simple compound found in a spice or an antioxidant,” Swasti Rastogi, the study’s first author and a PhD candidate at FIT, said in a statement.

“It not only helps to improve blood sugar levels,” she added, “but also reduces inflammation, restores cellular responses and preserves both structure and function of the aorta in Type 1 diabetes.”

For this study, Rastogi’s team used a rat model for Type 1 diabetes to compare the critters exposed to curcumin to those that didn’t get a taste of the golden goodness.

The diabetic rats that underwent the treatment had better vascular function — resembling that of nondiabetic rats — after just a month.

Curcumin reduced the rats’ inflammation, balanced the flow of calcium ions in their blood vessels and increased the levels of a protein that’s significantly affected by diabetes.

The results will be presented in the coming days at the American Physiology Summit in Minneapolis.

Despite the promise shown in this research, curcumin has a long way to go before it’s used as a diabetes treatment.

First, this study only evaluated its potential in rats with simulated Type 1 diabetes.

Also, curcumin is typically poorly absorbed in the human gut and quickly eliminated by the body. It’s often combined with something else, like black pepper, to increase its bioavailability.

The researchers noted that more studies are needed to pinpoint the most effective curcumin dosage that won’t interfere with medications.

This is not curcumin’s first time in the sun. It’s widely used to manage osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis by reducing joint pain and inflammation.

It’s also being investigated for chronic illnesses fueled by inflammation and metabolic dysfunction, like inflammatory bowel disease, certain cancers and neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.