Where is it found?

Turmeric grows in various parts of Asia including India, Cambodia, China, and Malesia (Quattrocchi, 2012).

How is it used?

Turmeric is a plant whose underground stems (rhizomes) have been utilized for many centuries (alone or in combination worth other plants) in India and other parts of Asia as a spice, medicine, and natural yellow-orange food coloring (Bandyopadhyay, 2014; Quattrocchi, 2012; Gupta et al., 2013).

What is it used for?

Its traditional use as herbal medicine in Ayurveda, Siddha, and Unani medicine of India has been to treat a plethora of ailments including asthma, inflammation, liver and gall bladder disorders, dyspepsia, peptic ulcers, infections, fungal infections (mycoses), wounds, and skin diseases. The rhizomes are also used against intestinal parasites, amenorrhea (absence of menstruation), cholera, and jaundice (Khare, 2007, 2004; Tang and Eisenbrand, 2011; Sivarajan and Balanchandran, 1994).

Turmeric flowers are taken as a tea to lower fevers. A paste made from the flowers is applied topically to treat ringworm, gonorrhea, and parasitic skin diseases (Quattrocchi, 2012).
The curcuminoids contained in the rhizome, which give the yellow color to turmeric, are composed of a mixture of curcumin (also known as diferuloylmethane, Natural Yellow 3, and E100), demethoxycurcumin, and bisdemethoxycurcumin. Curcumin comprises approximately 90% of the total content of the curcuminoids present in the rhizome (Chaudhari et al., 2015).

Curcumin has been found to possess various beneficial health effects including antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiviral, and antiangiogenic (prevents the formation of new blood vessels in tumors). Additionally, it may protect against neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, and has hypoglycemic (antidiabetic) effects. One of the most salient features of this phytochemical compound is that it possesses powerful antitumor activities; it prevents tumor invasion and metastasis in a number of animal models, including models of lung, liver, stomach, colon, breast, and esophageal cancer, among others (Bandyopadhyay, 2014; Tang and Eisenbrand, 2011) Chaithongyot et al. (2015) reported that one of the various phytochemicals found in the turmeric rhizome, Curcuma C20-dialdehyde, could be a potential antineoplastic (anticancer) agent for chemotherapy and/or chemoprevention of both colon as well as cervical cancer.

A study assessed the possible synergistic (combination) effect of curcumin and an antitumor compound known as ABT-737. The results indicated that the combination of curcumin and ABT 737 can effectively induce the death of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells by inducing programmed celled death (apoptosis), and may offer a potential treatment strategy for patients with HCC (Zheng et al., 2015).

Invasive mycoses (fungal infections) can be an important complication related to some forms of cancer, since they can be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in patients suffering from this disease. Curcumin has a powerful antifungal effect against diverse strains of Candida, Cryptococcus, Aspergillus, Trichosporon and Paracoccidioides. Additionally, curcumin possesses a very good safety profile even at large doses. For these reasons, more research with turmeric and its main component, curcumin is expected to lead to clinical trials, as well as to improve the survival rate from fungal infections among cancer patients (Chen et al., 2015).

Studies have found that curcumin possesses both spermicidal as well as broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against various species of bacteria and yeast that cause vaginal infections. For these reasons, curcumin may offer an innovative, non-steroidal contraceptive that has both spermicidal as well as antimicrobial activities for the treatment of many gynecological diseases, including cancer (Naz et al., 2016; Naz and Lough, 2014).
A review by Chaudhari et al. (2015) found that curcumin possess various valuable anti-inflammatory properties that can employed for the treatment of diverse skin conditions. However, possible allergic reactions (contact allergies) may occur in susceptible people, although more controlled studies with turmeric are needed in order to ascertain this.