Study from Singapore suggests as much - That is indeed music to my ears - I love curries and I dread Alzheimers!

Can eating curry boost your brain - and stave off Alzheimer's?

If it's true, then that is indeed music to my ears - I love curries and I dread Alzheimers!

For some time it has been thought that 'curcumin' the part of of the spice turmeric, which gives the characterisic yellow colour to curries, is the ingredient that may protect against Alzheimer's disease. This may explain why the rates of Alzheimers are lower in India than in the western world.

Now Dr Tze-Pin Ng, from the National University of Singapore, tested the thinking ability of over 1000 Asian people currently unaffected by Alzheimer's disease.

He used a standard test, the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), to test their mental agility. The guinea pigs were all aged between 60 and 93.

He found that those respondants who claimed to have eaten curry once or more in six months, or more than once a month, had better results than those who said they never or rarely ate it.

So even those who only had curry once in six months seemed to benefit.

The doctor suspects that curcumin, an ingredient of the spice tumeric, is responsible for the effects.

Curcumin is said to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties that are still being investigated.

Curcumin may inhibit the build up of layers of substances called amyloid plaques in the brain, which are more common in Alzheimers patients. Turmeric, the source of curcumin, is ground from one of the ginger plants that grow wild in the Himalayas, and is regular ingredient of dishes such as chicken tikka massala.

Researchers have also found that curcumin when used in combination with other anti-cancer drugs can slow down the spread of breast cancer secondaries to other parts of the body.

Dr Ng now wants to confirm his findings with a controlled clinical trial comparing the effects of curcumin and an inactive placebo.

The study was published in The American Journal of Epidemiology.

It is obviously too early to state yet that curry definitively helps the fight against Alzheimer's, but there is no reason not to have curry tonight, unless of course you wash it down with 10 pints of lager in the fine old British tradition!
This content was created on Thu 3 August 2006

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