In the past few years, turmeric has gone from being a spice in Indian food to being lauded for its amazing antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. That is why some people are now taking turmeric supplements in the hopes of preventing heart disease, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, and other diseases.
Turmeric and its main ingredient called curcumin, which is a polyphenol that has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and other neuroprotective effects, are starting to be investigated as a possible adjunctive treatment for schizophrenia, among other mental health disorders.
Research Suggests Turmeric May Have a Role in Treating Mental Illness
A study was published in one of the issues of Clinical Neuropharmacology. The study had 38 participants with chronic schizophrenia who were treated with either 3,000 milligrams per day of curcumin or a placebo, in addition to their regular medications. They were asked to take the curcumin for 24 weeks. Those who took curcumin showed better improvements in the negative symptoms of schizophrenia-like poverty of speech, apathy, flat affect and more.
A study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, there were 12 people with chronic schizophrenia and they were assigned to take 300 mg of curcumin or a placebo every day, in addition to the medication that they were already talking, in order to see if the curcumin improved their cognitive function. After eight weeks of taking curcumin, the researchers saw that compared with placebo, curcumin treatment helped improved the patient's working memory significantly.
Brain Function, Diets, and Supplements
This is not the first time that curcumin has been connected with improved cognitive function. There are older adults who take curcumin supplements and they experienced significant memory improvement, according to a review that was published in the issue of Phytotherapy Research. The supplement was found to be safe to take and well-tolerated. In a review of medical literature published in a 2019 issue of Current Drug Metabolism, the researches analyzed the potential for interactions between 10 spices and herbs and modern medicines used to treat and monitor neurological and psychiatric disorders, and they found that no issues happened with curcumin.
Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, MD., the chair of the department of psychiatry at the Medstar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. stated that the use of curcumin is not accepted right now in the field of psychiatry. There is some promising research but they are small studies.
One of the reasons that these findings are promising is that while antipsychotic medications do a great job of treating the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, like delusions and hallucinations, the negative symptoms are resistant to all psychotics. The study found that curcumin helped even the negative symptoms.
While the exact mechanisms behind the improvements are not known, there is a hypothesis that inflammation makes the mood and it makes psychiatric disorders worse. When inflammation is reduced, the disorder then improves.
The research published in 2015 in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology found that when people with depressive disorder took two capsules that had 1,000 mg of curcumin every day for six weeks, along with their current antidepressant medication, they experienced a greater antidepressant response, and they also experienced a significant decrease in inflammatory marker and it increases the brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is the same effect that did not happen among those assigned to the placebo group.
Dr. Ritchie advises people who are suffering from schizophrenia to talk to their physician if they are interested in learning more about curcumin. She also said that it is too early to recommend it because more research still needs to be done. It is important to consider one's overall health before taking curcumin because curcumin could interact with anticoagulant drugs and it could lower the blood sugar levels and aggravate gallstones.
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