Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Turmeric

0:00Dave Roberts here. There you are surrounded by fans, sharing wings, sharing drinks, high-fiving random strangers. Everybody remembers the game. Nobody remembers the guy coughing behind you until a few days later. At 2am, you wake up with a fever and your throats on fire. Now what? Urgent care, clothes, ER, slam, telehealth, maybe, but the pharmacy's clothes. You needed a medical emergency kit. These aren't first aid kits. They contain essential prescriptions used for over 30 common conditions, sinus and ear infection, UTIs, stomach bug, travelers diarrhea, and more. On hand before you need them. Use your doctor-developed guidebook to select the right prescription or call their telemedicine doctor standing by. It's like an urgent care and drug store at home. When you're sick, traveling, or stranded, you'll wish you ordered a medical emergency kit. Order online in minutes and it's shipped to your door and say $45 with my promo code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue. That's promo code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue.

1:01Hey y'all, welcome this week's show. Today we're going to talk about a very interesting herb. It's also a popular culinary ingredient and this is one that's been popular in recent years. So you may be familiar with it, but you probably don't know all that it does. And you know, maybe you never thought of not growing it, but it's actually an herb you can grow. You know, you could say what little money you're doing it and ensure quality. Make sure no weird chemicals have been put on it. Definitely worth considering. It is turmeric. Turmeric is a cousin of ginger and of course it's very popular in Indian food and and well, you know, really different cuisines. You'll find inquiries a lot, but it's actually been a very popular herb. Golly, for centuries in Europe, I mean, going back to Asian and Indian food, turmeric was recorded

2:01in use by at least 2,600 BC. Consider how long ago that was 2,600 BC. But it was really not recognized, I guess, by Europeans until it started coming through the trade routes. Really, I guess probably the Greek Empire, maybe the Romans, and they kind of considered it a variety of ginger. And actually it was not as popular as ginger because ginger has a much stronger peppery type flavor. And there's another cousin to him called Zedowary, I believe, or Sam Ginger. There's another name for it. I'll probably think of it here in a minute. That was actually probably the most popular of the three. Ginger was often preserved in candy, you know, like you get candy ginger from an Asian grocery store. So the Romans loved it. But the

3:03Sam Ginger, or I think Zedowary, there's a galangal, galangal. That's the other name for it. That was the one they really went crazy over. And it's interesting because now you go into most any grocery store in America, you're not going to find galangal. Maybe in an ethnic food section, it is still popular in Indian and Asian cuisine. For some reason, that actually fell out of use, even though it seems like that was probably the one that was easier to grow and cold climates in Germany and such. I don't know why. And really turmeric was very little used in Europe, really until the British colonization of India and Indonesia and different places. When they started bringing back those foods, those flavors, you know, I mean, they probably eat more curry in England than just about anywhere in the world. The Brits went nuts of a curry,

4:07which is understandable. I love a good curry and the varieties of curries are just great. I mean, it's almost like, I always think of like American chili as our version of curry. And I think not every culture has that. Really, not every culture has that heavily spiced bowl of something. But boy, I mean, British foods, none to be fairly bland. I like good English food. I really do. Good roast beef and gravy, Yorkshire puddings, you know, your pot roasts and your mashed potatoes. There's wonderful sausages. They do great pork sausages and pork pies and pasties and mints pies. But it's not known to be a very strongly flavored cuisine. You know, it's good, hearty, comforting food for the most part. Do you get to Christmas time when they start putting spices and everything and everything? Well, in everything, basically, I mean, mints pie, mints me is so good. We used to have, when I was a kid, we had a grocery store and we had a barrel.

5:12And this was actually made in house from an old British recipe that had been passed down for a few hundred years. And it was a mix of chopped apples and raisins and beef, suet and spices. And the real stuff is just fantastic. And the smell of it is incredible. And in our time, we may think, how weird is that to put beef fat? And sometimes, you know, some mints pies would go for a portion of meat as well. And usually that meat would be mixed in with your mints base when you're at a cook. And it might be ground pork usually. And that's very good. But meats were actually originally the fruit. You know, it's just an old English term. And some people put a few nuts in there. It really dates back to really ancient styles of cooking that come from the ancient Greek and Roman traditions as they moved into,

6:12especially the Romans, of course, not so much the Greek empire, but the Roman Empire moved into England, the British Isles and beyond. And there's also some influence from the Norse. But essentially, the Romans would make fruit cakes to use as like stored food. And I really mean, even Alexander the Great was doing that. So I mean, that was not a Roman invention. That probably goes back to the very long ways. But dried fruit, nuts, fat, honey, and spices, essentially were like their protein bars of the day. Well, in England, that really only kind of stuck around for the holidays. I don't know why. But they love their fruit cakes. And they absolutely make fantastic fruit cakes. So British fruit cake is, oh, oh, pureless, pureless. Absolutely. I mean, if the English have like one food, they should be like super proud of. I mean, yes,

7:14I love a full English breakfast. They make wonderful bacon and sausage and all that. But if there's like one standard English food that they should be like super proud of, it is their fruit cake. And it's nothing like American fruit cake. We're not talking those weird neon colored fruits and that nasty stuff. We usually get around Christmas and nobody wants to eat. And how that ever became popular, I will never know. But you were talking, you know, a nice rich buttery batter, real cake batter with dried fruit and nuts. So raisins and currents, maybe dried apricots, dried cherries, very common, and English walnuts, an English walnut cake. Hmm. I mean, you know, the Italian fruit cakes or the panatoni, it's very good. It's very good. But it cannot compare to an English walnut cake, walnut and date with honey. I mean, that is, that is just like hands down. And I'm a sweet sky. But anyway, so the English really did not use

8:18a lot of spices except during the holidays. And mainly Christmas. And I mean, that was, that was their tradition. And boy, when they started colonizing the Indies and Asia, India, you know, Pakistan before it was Pakistan, I guess. I mean, they brought back the curry recipes that have really been, I would say the dominant influence on English cuisine for the past three, four hundred years now, I guess. I mean, wow. Yeah, I mean, even you think you're your classic English sauce, Worcestersauce or Worcestershire, however you want to pronounce it, Worcestershire, Worcestershire sauce. It was invented to celebrate the British Empire at the time.

9:18So what they did is they took one ingredient from every British colony or territory. And so they had all these different spices along with anchovies and wine. And what's the fruit? I'm trying to think of that tamarind. Tamarind is in there. And I mean, just something to represent every single colony. And they said, well, mix it together to a sauce and see what happens. And it was horrible. But they didn't throw it away how they kept it in barrels and it fermented. And our Worcestersauce is that product. And that's a now any, just about any savory food that is English in origin has it included. That was not included before just a couple hundred years ago. Leanne Perens is still, I mean, it's just amazing how quickly they adopt those flavors. It's like,

10:23you know, we think of like the English for tea, right? I was talking with a guy the other day that was, he was from North Africa, but raised in France. So he had a really odd accent that almost sounded a little British and asked him about it. And he says, well, I'm not English. I don't drink tea. Just we love France. You know, I mean, he really, really odd accent. But yeah, you think of the English as tea drinkers, right? Tea doesn't come from England. Tea came from China. There was no tea in England until the British started occupying and trading with the Chinese. But boy, do they adopt and make their own just about anything? I mean, we think about the English having, you know, bad teeth because they eat so much sugary food at high tea and all that. They didn't have a lot of sugar for thousands of years. Really, the only sugar in England was honey or press fruit, you know, sugar that comes from like apples and such. That was their sugar. So they

11:27didn't have a lot of it. Man, when they colonized the Caribbean and started putting in sugar plantations, they went nuts over sugar. And now what do we think of for as far as English food? We think of a lot of sweet pastries and a lot of candies and everything with a little sugar in it, putting English, classic English puddings, which also come from the fruit cake tradition, which comes from the Romans. I mean, it's kind of hard when you think, you know, what is the indigenous British cuisine? It's probably roast beef, you know, roast beef and gravy. They do it absolutely fantastically because they weren't growing a lot of wheat. We didn't come into a later. They were not making a lot of bread. Breads came in. Probably, okay, I'm probably going to get this wrong. I'm thinking somewhere around 500 AD, you start seeing the British baking tradition take off as they started using more wheat flour. Of course, you know, they were using grains. They were making some kind of, you know, hearth bread before the end, but I'm talking like loaf bread.

12:32And the pie crusts they're known for, you know, this may be a little geeky for you. Maybe you don't geek out on food history the way I do, but I really do. And I enjoy it quite a bit. And it's just a kind of amazing to look at England that is like so such a proud nation. Now I have a lot of problems with England. Okay, I'm, you know, Irish heritage over here. I don't celebrate Britain the way a lot of the, you know, PBS crowd does. But you have to admit that the English have a very we've got a proud nature about their history and heritage. But when you look at their cuisine, 99% of it, 90% of it at least is foreign import. I mean, yeah, it's coming from the north. It's coming from the Romans. It's coming from India. It's coming from the West Indies. It's, you know, and I mean, they embrace the potato. The potato comes from Peru and going down the list,

13:40of just, you know, just about everything in English cuisine comes from somewhere else. It's not the case with Greek or Italian or French. I mean, yes, you see a huge Roman influence in French cooking without a doubt. But the sauces, especially that which the French are known for. But, yeah, the French were making their own sausage and great soups and stews. And they had, they had quite a tradition long before Rome. Germany would be the same. I mean, the Germans had quite a food tradition. The Poles. Polen was actually recognized as the Christiandom spread and the Roman, holy Roman empire at this point went to Christianize central Europe. When they got to Poland, they were blown away by the food. I mean, they thought it was like better than Italian food. So I mean, the Pope actually established a summer residence in Poland because it's so hot in Rome. And of course, no air conditioning for a thousand years to come.

14:45So he would spend summers. The whole church would essentially move to Poland for a while. And it was like a second Vatican, which they also sort of had a second Vatican in France. So, I mean, you know, the church was seasonal in different areas. And but fell so in love with the Polish sausages. He wrote extensively about it just how perfect Polish food was. To his taste, I mean, literally, you know, rivaled that of Rome. And I don't disagree at all. I could eat Polish food every day of the year and be very, very happy. Yeah, I'd have to have some Chinese once a week and some Mexican, but in my good old, you know, Southern cooking. But I love Polish food. When Napoleon discovered Polish food, he was just had every ills for it. When the Russians discovered Polish food, they just went nuts over it literally. But anyway, that's, yeah, the history of world food is very interesting to me. I mean, just the other day I was doing a little

15:50research and found out that the McDonald's chicken McNuggets were actually based on a recipe. I believe it was a French chef in St. Petersburg when France and Russia were aligned before the Bolshevik Resolution. I actually figured out how to mince chicken and form it into proto chicken McNuggets and bread them and fry them up. And they were croquettes. And it was just all the rage and all the, you know, grandhouses and parties for, you know, 2030, 40 years. Everybody was eating these little croquettes and made of different meats. The recipe actually goes back to the old force meats from a pickiest ancient Roman cookbook, first recorded cookbook. He was doing the same thing. And then we think of, you know, chicken McNuggets being a modern invention, which is, you know, kind of crazy. But like I said, I geek out on this stuff. Let's talk about turmeric. So, let's see, a lot of times actually before turmeric was used, modestly and in food, it was

16:58used as a dye plant. If you think about some of the Hindu and Buddhist monks, they had these bright yellow robes. They were dyed with turmeric. But let's see, Chinese medicine, they seem to have kind of discovered it first. It's used for chest pains, pain in the ribs, abdomen or liver area, nose bleed, vomiting with bleeding and heat stroke. The rhizomes used to treat certain types of tumors and in liver disease, Chinese research has proven Zedowari, Zedowari's turmeric's Latin glandgole was the other one I was trying to think of. Glandgole was not Zedowari. I think I misspoke on that. But anyway, it's proven Zedowari's use in reducing cervical cancer and increasing the cancer killing effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. And Ayurvedic medicine, that's Indian medicine, turmeric is used for inflammation, wounds and skin ulcers, itching, stomach complaints, flachylants, conjunctivitis, constipation, ringworm and colic. It is also used in India for

18:04loss of appetite, tuberculosis, wounds, leukemia fever, bronchitis, asthma. But it's mainly used for stomach and digestive issues. And it's a general body tonic. I guess simple water here, you can choke up. So it had some very limited use in Greek medicine. Can't find really anything. It's have put notes on that. The Ascoridys was not, you know, writing about it. Hypocritees was not writing about it. But by 1100 AD, turmeric was at least by the end established in Western herbalism. Say, Hildegarde van Bingen wrote a turmeric seven times in her classic work, Physica, around 1100 AD. And that's likely how turmeric came to be included in the Swedish bitters, because that may have been her formula or it may have been based on her teaching, seems to have come from her. And she really liked using it in herbal spiced wines. And but also in cookies.

19:10Yeah, she would make these cookies with turmeric and clothes and ginger and such. And used them to calm, excitable children, and help them concentrate and study. She per cookies were almost like an ancient remedy for ADD and HDH, whatever. So by the 1930s England, this grieve wrote about it. And of course, she describes the plant and you know what turmeric is. Dave Roberts here. There you are surrounded by fans, sharing wings, sharing drinks, high-fiving random strangers. Everybody remembers the game. Nobody remembers the guy coughing behind you until a few days later. At 2am, you wake up with a fever and your throats on fire. Now what? Urgent care, clothes, ER, slam, telehealth, maybe, but the pharmacies close. You needed a medical emergency kit. These aren't first aid kits. They contain essential prescriptions used for over 30 common conditions, sinus and ear infection, UTIs, stomach bug, travelers diarrhea, and more. On hand before you need them. Use your doctor-developed guidebook to select the right prescription

20:14or call their telemedicine doctor standing by. It's like an urgent care and drug store at home. When you're sick, traveling, or stranded, you'll wish you ordered a medical emergency kit. Order online in minutes and it's shipped to your door and say $45 with my promo code blue at urgentcare kit.com slash blue. That's promo code blue at urgentcare kit.com slash blue. There's nothing like being in the stands cheering on your favorite team. Game time is your hack to unlocking amazing tickets in just a few taps. It's easy to use and the game time guarantee means you can trust you'll get 100% authentic tickets at the best price. Fees are always included, so what you see is what you pay. Take the guesswork out of buying sports tickets with game time. Download the game time app and create an account to start searching for tickets to upcoming games and events.

22:31And it's a pretty plant. You do it from cuttings from the root or rhizome. It's actually a rhizome. Make sure it's good, healthy, and fresh. And just put it in a pot, put some sandy soil in there, give it some water, and it'll grow up into a nice, kind of big, pretty green plant with yellowish flowers and, yeah, I mean, piece of cake. It'll start putting out new rhizomes after about a year, so you can start harvesting it. So definitely one you can grow yourself. She says, in her medicinal actions and uses turmeric is a mild aromatic stimulant used in medicine and as a coloring. It was once a cure for jaundice, used as a cure for jaundice. It's chief uses in the manufacture of curry powders, obviously, and also included mustard. That's actually what gives French is mustard and other like bright yellow mustard. It's color. It's not mustard seed. It's turmeric. She says, yeah, she said it wasn't much used in herbal medicine by the 1930s, but it's had quite a comeback in recent years. So these days turmeric is widely used as an

23:37anti-inflammatory. It is particularly good against chronic inflammation. The deal is the liver has difficulty processing turmeric. It's best absorbed and processed by the liver, combining it with black pepper and a natural fat, essentially just kind of hitch hikes along with the pepper and fat. So especially good is cod liver oil, which is also a strong anti-inflammatory. A good quality fish oil, but cod liver oil really is my choice. But any natural fat, it can be butter, it can be olive oil, it really doesn't matter. Sesame seed oil is particularly good for the liver. So a little bit of natural fat, it can be large, it can be beef fat, it doesn't matter. Have some with your bacon, I don't care. Just get some natural fat and some black pepper. Turmeric is strongly antioxidant and those like dual anti-inflammatory antioxidant properties make it particularly good for cancer, heart disease and arthritis. It helps wounds heal and lowers

24:41cholesterol. It's good for liver health and stimulates digestive secretions and blood supply to the digestive system. A couple years ago, a book called The Lost Book of Irval Remedies came out and I've mentioned it before. I hate the title because none of this information's lost. I got it. It's just, I don't know, people don't read books anymore. Anyway, so I didn't want to buy it. Finally did break down and buy a copy because people were raving over it. Turned out it's a darn good book, actually. They listed turmeric as improves brain function and lowers the risk of brain disease, including Alzheimer's and depression, cricumen, that's the basically essential oil of turmeric. Can increase levels of brain-derived, neurotrophic factor, BDNF, which is a growth hormone for the brain. Many brain diseases, including Alzheimer's and depression, are linked with decreasing levels

25:42of BDNF hormone. Increasing BDNF levels with cricumen can effectively delay or possibly reverse many age-related brain function diseases. By increasing BDNF, cricumen may also improve memory and cognitive performance. By increasing the growth of new neurons and fighting the degenerative processes in the brain. Alzheimer's disease is characterized by a build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain. Cricumen crosses the blood-brain barrier and helps clear these plaques, long-term use is required. Although standardized extract or turmeric curcumin may be more useful than other forms taking capsules. The best way to use it is regularly in food and beverage. Absolutely. I absolutely love curries. I'll throw it in chicken papaya, chicken papaya, a little turmeric, and there's fine. Throw it in with my homemade kimchi. It's really good. I've given you my warming spice tea before. This is what I take before going out fishing or hunting on a cold morning,

26:47checking the trap line or anything I might be doing. Just take about a teaspoon, about a half teaspoon each. Yeah, about, for a cup or two. I've termed black pepper ginger and cinnamon and a couple of cloves. Hot water over it and it just warms you from the inside and it will keep you warm. It actually does actually increase the body temperature. Put on some wool socks and, you know, and your long johns and bundle up, you know, good hat. And it will keep you warm out there amazingly for a couple of hours. I mean, it's just, it's incredible really and it's very, very good for you. And yeah, I'm a hot dog fanatic. So, you know, I was associated with the turmeric with the mustard because yeah, it's really good. Now, a lot of people make what's called golden milk, which is essentially a tea made of turmeric and milk, just stirring powdered turmeric into milk. And they say it helps them sleep. You know, stirring maybe a teaspoon full of black

27:55strapped molasses with that and it'll also regulate insulin levels and won't spike it. If you don't have a problem with that honey and yeah, they say, I mean, it's good. It's going to be very anti-inflammatory. It does great in like liver pate and such. Anyway, turmeric's good. So, however, you consume it, enjoy it. It's flavorful. It's really good for you. Just remember, it does need to be combined with some kind of fat and some black pepper for, for, for, for use. So, I guess it's going to wrap it up, y'all. Have a great week and I will talk to you next time. The information this podcast is non-intended to diagnose your treat, kidney disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The US government does not recognize the practice of herbal medicine and there is no governing body regulating herbalists. Therefore, I'm really just a guy who studies herbalists. I'm not offering any advice. I don't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or

28:57true. I can tell you what herbs have been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience and if I believe in herbs help me. I cannot nor would I tell you to say, if you use an herb anyone, recommend you are treating yourself. You take full responsibility for your health. Humans are individuals and no two are identical. What works for me may not work for you. You may have an allergy, a sensitivity and underlying condition. Then no one else human shares and you don't even know about it. Be careful with your health. By continuing to list my podcast or read my blog, you are ready to be responsible for yourself, do your own research, make your own choices and not to blame me for anything ever.