Organic Turmeric is an Australian owned and operated manufacturer of the highest quality turmeric supplement we have been able to find locally.
In this interview with founder Garuda Nicolle, we learn some surprising facts about the power of turmeric as wide-spectrum wellness nutrient. Interestingly, Garuda does not advocate the habitual consumption of supplements. In this 40 minute podcast, Garuda shares some great insights, but his one key takeaway message for us is to have an awareness of our physical and mental well-being and how whole foods like turmeric can help us maintain and improve wellness.
Highlights:
0.25 Who is Garuda Nicolle?
1.15 How did the Organic Turmeric business start?
1.53: We learn that Cayenne Pepper is actually a more potent anti-inflammatory than turmeric.
2.43: Why did Garuda choose to create a Turmeric product over a DHA/EPA soft gel product?
3.30: What is turmeric? History, benefits and why Organic is important.
5.30: Anti-angiogenic foods
6.00: How turmeric can help you with digestive discomfort
7.58: Tips on taking supplements in light of an increasingly nutrient deprived food supply with a focus on turmeric.
9.38: Food is medicine
9.50: The documentary mentioned is called Hungry for Change
10.20 A more in-depth look at turmeric and its active ingredients
11.46: The most active ingredients in turmeric
12.20: Curcumin extract vs Turmeric. What to take?
12.54: Curcumin on its own is best taken for pain relief (acute)
13.30: Opinion on Piperine to boost absorption and bio-availabilty (note that some people are allergic to black pepper)
14.20 Taking a whole food is better than ingesting just an extract which is what curcumin is.
15.50: Introduction to the idea of light energy in food. Organic food has more light energy.
18.00 Boosting absorption and bioavailability through ingredients contained in everyday meals.
19.00: Contrast of eastern vs western cuisine and the spice/herb combinations that are a naturally occurring part of eastern diets and therefore you are likely getting increased absorption and bioavailability serendipitously.
19.45: Supersize me!
20.19: The Heart Foundation tick and other industry standard biases
22.00: Butter vs Margarine propaganda in Australia
23.00: Good vs. bad fats. Thumbs up for coconut oil!
23.35: Get a Fresh Start petition to get the Heart Foundation to stop endorsing margarine
24.15: Discussion on therapeutic dosage of curcumin for acute conditions and transitioning to turmeric over the long term
26.17: Organic Turmeric for cooking. The capsules keep mycotoxins out.
26.45: Curcumin inhibits the growth of H Pylori (citation)
27.36: What is Angiogenesis? Anti-angiogenic foods as a preventative measure as presented in Can We Eat to Starve Cancer?
30.18: What used to work, still works (Paleo diet)
30.49: Why aren't doctors prescribing these foods? How doctors treated people before the advent of modern medicine and drugs.
32.50: Oregano Oil protocol to kill parasites.
33.45: Summary of the benefits of Organic Turmeric
33.55: A metaphor on how nature works
34.30: Summary of Organic Turmeric and benefits
36.00: Be aware of your own body. Quantification with uBiome (Australian options include Microba and i-Screen) and Talking20 and how services like this are changing the way we approach health.
37.47: Awareness of your body your mind is the most important factor for healthy living. Eliminating and managing stress is vital
38.53: Turmeric for wound healing
Now available at OptimOZ
Transcript:
KUNAL: Good morning, everyone. Today we’re here with Garuda Nicolle, the founder of Organic Turmeric. Hi, Garuda.
GARUDA NICOLLE: Hi Kunal, how are you?
KUNAL: Good, thank you. Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you started your business and why?
GARUDA: I’ve been into health for quite a few years, thanks to my mum and the naturopath that I went to. I’ve also known about the benefits of – particularly, she introduced me to four specific spices that she said were very, very good for the body and to take them every day, and turmeric was one of them. The other ones were cumin – just basic spices you use in your home, actually – but turmeric seems to be the most powerful and the most researched and the most used by everyone, especially in eastern countries where they use it a lot, like India. I’m also currently studying a degree in Health Science, so that’s also given me more incentive to go deeper into understanding the benefits of just simple spices like turmeric, really.
The business itself is something I started for that reason, because I’ve always been inclined to want to help people, and specifically with their health, and just give them an understanding of health. So that’s why I started the business.
KUNAL: Fantastic. So turmeric’s something you’ve grown up with, from the sounds of it.
GARUDA: Yeah. It’s only been about maybe eight years or so since I’ve really understood how powerful simple things can be, just in your kitchen cabinet. Another one that I was really impressed with is cayenne pepper. It’s an amazing herb.
KUNAL: Yeah? What’s the benefit there?
GARUDA: It’s actually more anti-inflammatory than turmeric. It’s the most anti-inflammatory spice, I think, known to man. But the problem is, it’s quite hot, and some people can take it, some people can’t, and some people are worried about it. So there’s definitely issues with it, so that’s why I didn’t go for cayenne pepper. I’m still thinking about it, but maybe in the future sometimes.
KUNAL: Is it the capsaicin in the cayenne pepper that’s the active ingredient there?
GARUDA: I haven’t done a lot of research into it. I know there’s one active ingredient, but yeah, I haven’t done a lot of research. I do know it’s very high in vitamin C, so that’s interesting.
KUNAL: Why did you pick turmeric as your product?
GARUDA: The main reason was I initially wanted to start off with a product, an anti-inflammatory oil, which is from algae. It’s a DHA/EPA sort of product. I found it was just far too expensive to produce and get it manufactured, particularly for vegans, because it was very important that it was vegan-friendly. So I ended up trying to just do the next best thing really, so turmeric was something I knew about and relatively cheap. The manufacturing’s still expensive, but much cheaper than trying to get soft gel capsules, that’s for sure. I thought it’d be something that could be very beneficial to people, yet it’s not too expensive to do. It’s still within my means.
KUNAL: Can you tell us a little bit about turmeric, its benefits, and particularly why organic turmeric is important?
GARUDA: Turmeric is a very powerful herb. It’s been used in India since they can remember. Its benefits mostly I would say would be in inflammation and arthritis, because it’s a form of inflammation. But arthritis can also be caused by fungal infection. Turmeric is also anti-fungal, so it works well in both areas there. It’s actually anti-microbial, so it will kill anything, including bacteria, parasites; it’s a very, very powerful herb.
KUNAL: When you say it’s going to cure anything, are we stepping over a line here a little bit?
GARUDA: No, I mean kill. It will kill anything.
KUNAL: It will kill anything, okay.
GARUDA: Yeah, kill. There are limits, because there’s always something out there that’s difficult – and it’s also about amount as well. Will one gram of turmeric be enough to kill something? Well…
KUNAL: Yeah, dosage is something that will be of particular interest to everyone. That’s something we can get into a bit later on in the conversation. I think we’ve got that earmarked.
GARUDA: Yeah, yeah, we’ll definitely get into that. It’s an important point. So I guess the other things it’s used for is digestive problems. A lot of people who have gas, that’s something I’ve actually had very, very good experience with. It can be used for weight loss because it’s very warming to the body, so it increases metabolism. A lot of people now are starting to use it for its anti-cancer properties, just because it basically can deactivate cancer cells. There’s many pathways because there’s many actives in turmeric, basically.
KUNAL: Yeah, I came across some interesting research talking about anti-angiogenic foods, which basically means foods that will stop the formation of blood vessels to tumor cells, and turmeric is very, very high up on that list. It’s been shown to be more effective than prescribed medication in many cases. I think the only other natural substance higher up on the list was vitamin E.
Okay, well, you mentioned you’ve had a particular experience of your own with digestion and turmeric?
GARUDA: Yeah, that’s right. What happened was, it happened a couple of times, but the one that really stood out for me was – because my particular type of dosha, as it’s called in Ayurveda, is “Vata,” which means wind. There’s a lot of wind in the body. Not just the digestive tract, but the whole body is governed by wind, predominantly. Anyway, for that reason, a lot of people who are Vata have digestive problems. So I do occasionally get that problem in the digestive tract with wind. In other words, cramping, or gas pain, as other people know it by.
I had a really bad cramp once, to the point where I actually couldn’t walk, and it was very sudden, just came out of nowhere. I knew turmeric was very good for that. I actually wanted it to go away quicker, so I emptied the capsules into water, a couple – just about two, I think – mixed it up and just drank it straight, and I think it took about two minutes, and it was literally like turning off a light switch, from extreme pain to just gone, instantly. It was very profound for me. I didn’t expect it to happen that way. I thought it would slowly ease away. But in this particular instance, it happened instantly, so I was quite surprised.
KUNAL: That’s great. What dosage did you take?
GARUDA: It was only two capsules, so that’s one and a half grams. Wasn’t that much.
KUNAL: Okay, and this is something you repeated during the day?
GARUDA: No, actually, I did it once and it was gone. That was it. It just stopped the gas problem pretty much straight.
KUNAL: Okay, cool. Why would someone want to take organic turmeric habitually?
GARUDA: I’m not a huge believer in taking products or any sort of vitamin or mineral in too extreme. Like these days, the soil is depleted, and there are a lot of problems with nutrition these days, much more than there used to be. So you might find you might have to – as time goes on – I mean, I don’t like the idea of it, but as time goes on, it seems like this is becoming more and more of a problem for people. It’s something to be aware of.
But the reason why, I think it’s mostly a preventative measure, to stop things from happening, and overall health really. Turmeric really is one of those things that just helps with overall health in almost every aspect of the body. It’s quite amazing. It helps with the lungs, with the skin, with the liver. Very, very good for the liver, actually. It’s even been shown to help with plaques in the brain; it’s been shown to help reduce plaques in the arteries. There’s different reasons, personally, why I think this might be, but if you go down to a very scientific level, the mechanisms are very complicated. You could write books on this stuff, it’s that complicated.
KUNAL: Yeah, I believe there are books available.
GARUDA: It’s pretty crazy. The body’s so complex, trying to find every single mechanism is not really the point. The point is to understand what foods are good in the body, and understand that food is medicine, actually. That’s the biggest point, I think. If anyone comes away from this podcast with anything, just understanding that foods are very powerful.
KUNAL: One thing I came across very recently is a documentary that’s about to be published. What they were basically talking about is how we are now consuming products, not foods, and there needs to be a paradigm shift away from that and back to food as it was known 100 years ago sort of thing.
GARUDA: Absolutely, yeah.
KUNAL: Cool. We’ve talked at the high level about what turmeric is. Could you give us a little bit more of a scientific description, what are the active ingredients in turmeric, what’s its nutritional profile?
GARUDA: Yeah, sure. Basically turmeric comes from the same family as ginger. I call it the little brother, or big brother, depending on how you look at it. It’s actually smaller, the way the root grows, but as far as benefits, I believe the benefits are probably greater than ginger all around. But ginger, again, amazing food, so wouldn’t count that out.
The other important thing to know about turmeric is it has – I think they’ve documented over 1,000 different actives in turmeric, but because there’s so many –
KUNAL: Wow.
GARUDA: Yeah, it’s amazing. You’d be surprised, in other foods as well, how many there are. There’s just so many, it’s difficult to really document well. But in turmeric, it’s been actually already discovered that there’s over 1,000.
I think it was a chemist, he was an Ayurvedic doctor, I think, and he proposed that the most active ingredients in turmeric – they’re the ones that are the most in there and they do the most effect in the body when you take it – would be turmerain [sp], which is one of the active oils in there. There’s quite a lot of turmerian [sp] in turmeric, actually. Zingiberene, phellandrene [sp], cineole, sabinene, borneo [sp], and curcumin. That’s what he put as the main actives. There’s probably a couple more that probably do quite a lot in the body, but yeah, it’s all the quantities. So that would be the highest quantities of actives in the herb, I’d say.
KUNAL: Okay. You mentioned curcumin at the end there, and from what I’ve seen in PubMed research articles, curcumin seems to be the one that just about everyone is focusing on for research. And what’s available in supplement stores as well, it’s curcumin extract as opposed to turmeric itself. What’s the benefit of taking the whole turmeric powder versus just curcumin extract? Would someone take curcumin for a specific purpose, rather than taking turmeric?
GARUDA: I think the biggest benefit from taking curcumin as an extract just on its own would be if you need a very quick result from pain. The pain would probably be the biggest reason. It is very strong, curcumin. There’s so many articles on the internet, who do you believe these days? There’s literally so many. Some people are saying that curcumin isn’t very well absorbed in the body, like 2% up to 5%, maybe, of the curcumin that you take. Other people are saying that you absorb more.
There’s some people that bring out products with added pepper extracts, like Piperine and so on. Or Bioperine is another one, an extract of Piperine, so a double extract. You’ve got all these people saying that their products are going to give you more absorption into the body, and therefore a better result. There’s probably some truth in some of it, but I’m a firm believer of a person being very aware of their own body. The first thing to do is, I would not be against trying different products out. If you hear and read something, “This is going to help,” try it out, see if it helps. If it does, that’s good; don’t be afraid to try something else as well, that’s of high quality. High quality is very important.
Coming back to the main point about turmeric as opposed to curcumin, a good thing to understand is whole foods. It’s talked about a lot, and what it means, or what it is, is you’re not changing the structure of anything. You’re basically taking the food out of nature and then ingesting it straight from there, rather than trying to get an extract, which is what curcumin is.
The problem with that is, in nature you’ve got everything that’s needed in the food already, to digest and absorb that food. You’ve got the carbohydrates, you’ve go the fats – because like, for example, you need fat to absorb certain vitamin like A, D, E, and K. If you don’t have the fat in the food, then you can’t absorb those vitamins; it’ll just go through your digestive tract. Although they haven’t researched it, there will be a time when it will come where they’ll realize that it’s the same with a lot of foods.
For example, why don’t we just extract protein isolates from food and put it in a powder, and just extract the carbohydrates, and just do all these different extracts of powders from food, and not eat fresh food, and just go and eat all powders? Why don’t we do that? Why isn’t that acceptable or wise? It seems stupid, and probably it will cause problems. It will cause health problems.
The reason, I believe, is because you’ve got things in food that aren’t that well understood, like – I think there was a German engineer who developed some device that could measure light energy in the food, and organic food has more light energy. They call it biophotons, or biophytons, something like that.
KUNAL: What does that mean, exactly?
GARUDA: It basically means living light. Biophotons, I think it is. It’s a hard area to research. You might find some on the internet. But you’ll see images of organic toast or organic apple versus just conventional, and you’ll see there’s a lot more light emanating from these foods. I guess you could consider it, the sun gives energy, through photosynthesis, but also through the actual light particles absorbed into the food. So it’s living. It’s alive. When you eat it, it also goes into the body, helps digestion, helps their antioxidant protection in the body. It’s pretty much what we live on.
Eating dead food, that’s what they mean by dead food. Unnamed energy that you can’t quantify it. How do you quantify it under a microscope? Everyone wants to know what it is, how do you name it, how do you see it? And that’s a very important point to understand, is the whole food and the fact that it came from nature. It’s got these attributes that you’re not going to find in an extract so much.
To be honest, the truth is, the best way to eat turmeric is to pull it out of the ground and eat it, raw, straight. That is actually the best way you can eat turmeric, and that will have the best effect in your body. Or grated in a salad, or something like that. But it takes a long time to grow; it’s very difficult to find an organic source in your supermarket, if you can even find it at all. The next best thing that I think people should do is try and take the powdered herb, if they can. Which has still got a lot of the benefits. Not full; it will never have the full benefit as the whole food, but it still contains a lot of benefit there, definitely.
KUNAL: You touched on Piperine as something that could potentially boost absorption and bioavailability of turmeric and its active components. One thing that came to mind for me when you said that is, aside from Piperine being a black pepper extract, you said turmeric has been heavily used in India and China and the East for centuries. I guess if you look at the cuisines there, they tend to be a combination of all of these ingredients, like turmeric and peppers and ginger.
GARUDA: Yeah, that’s true.
KUNAL: It’s an interesting point, because these recipes are being passed down generation after generation, and there’s obviously good reason for it. They’re good for you. One could even argue that many of the modern diseases we see, like diabetes for example, can be put down to a Western diet.
GARUDA: Oh, absolutely.
KUNAL: Heavy on wheats and grains and pastas. That’s taken one step further, because now we have huge corporations, like fast food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King who basically convinced us that this is the right food to eat, with a can of Coke as well, and don’t forget to upsize and get fries on the side. That’s just a contrast.
GARUDA: I think that’s actually quite interesting, because I don’t know if you saw that – there was a movie that was released, sort of a documentary really, called Supersize Me, where he actually did try a McDonald’s diet for a month. Just McDonald’s, nothing else, every day, and he was in a serious state of disease by the end of that month, which I thought was very interesting. Yeah, McDonald’s were quite worried by that, I believe.
KUNAL: They would be. They would be. There’s even so many foods served on fast food menus that have Heart Foundation Ticks, which is somewhat baffling, considering the source of those foods. It’s all coming from mass-produced, potentially nutritionally deprived sources.
GARUDA: That’s a very good point, actually, that you’re talking about. Specifically with the Heart Foundation, you have to understand that even these – I don’t even know if they’re government-operated, but these facilities that they’ve provided, like the Heart Foundation and so on, are run by money. That’s what it comes down to. When it comes down to products and what you see in the shops, everything comes back to money. There’s very little integrity in food production these days.
There’s a few companies out there, and if you find them, hold on to their products and use them. But do your research. Just don’t even look at the Ticks. Don’t even look at the advertising, “high in calcium,” all this stuff. Just forget it. It’s absolute nonsense. You need to understand health before you go into the shops. Understand what it is, understand what health means, understand what nutrition means. Find out what that is. Understand it. Then go to the shops, and then you won’t be so easily manipulated or influenced by false advertising.
KUNAL: Yeah. There is so much of it out there, like you were saying. There’s so much information on the internet; who do you believe, what’s real or what’s not? I found a website, if you type in “butter vs. margarine,” for example, in Google, the first result comes up is a paid website, and it’s manufactured by a company that only produces margarine.
GARUDA: Oh my God, that’s scary.
KUNAL: It is scary, because they present everything in a manner that goes “margarine is good, butter is bad.” There’s been a shift in that point of view over time. It’s gone back and forth over the decades, from “butter is bad” to “margarine is good,” but then the science disproved that, and it’s back to “butter is good, as long as it’s grass-fed butter.”
GARUDA: Yeah, that’s very scary. That’s a big topic, because it’s all about oils and fats. Yeah, I did a lot of research into the fats, and that’s a really big topic. But while we’re on it, just quickly, I believe that people should be very, very careful. I believe fats are one of the most important things to understand how they work and which ones are good and which ones are bad. Do your research big time.
I’ll just quickly say that one of the best fats you can eat is coconut oil, and one of the worst fats you can eat is canola oil. Even though it’s considered one of the greatest, it’s one of the worst. And margarine is the worst. But canola oil would probably be close alongside that.
KUNAL: Just before we get back on track, there is actually a website called Get a Fresh Start. The person who runs that, Jessie, has actually started a petition to get the Heart Foundation to stop endorsing margarine as a heart-safe food. She’s collected over 3,000 signatures so far, and that petition is still alive on Change.org. We’ve actually shared that on the OptimOZ Facebook page as well, so if anyone’s interested in that, it’s there.
GARUDA: That’s great.
KUNAL: Okay, coming back to turmeric now. One thing I’ve made a note of that I wanted to bring up with you is at the moment, I’m using organic turmeric. I’m taking three caps with each meal, so that’s about eight or nine grams in total per day. For me, I guess I’m taking it specifically – I mean, for general wellbeing, as we’ve just learnt, it has broad spectrum benefits – but for me, particularly, I’m taking it for anti-inflammatory and digestive aids.
You’ve touched on this briefly already, but from the research I’ve seen, it says that the therapeutic dose of curcumin is 400 to 600 milligrams per day. Now, from what I’ve seen, curcumin constitutes only 3% of turmeric?
GARUDA: It is roughly between 3% and 10%, depending on the quality of the turmeric that you get. It can be up to 10%, I’ve read, but unless you get it tested, you wouldn’t really know. But I work on a percentage of about 5%, usually.
KUNAL: Okay. You mentioned before that someone would take curcumin specifically for a condition like – what was it again?
GARUDA: I would just say mostly for pain. If you’re in a lot of pain, just to get the pain down, because no one wants to be in pain. So I would use it as a pain reliever, and then over a couple of weeks or a month, or however long you need to, but take turmeric at the same time, or slowly migrate to turmeric. That would be my advice.
KUNAL: Okay, so curcumin is kind of like an acute solution, but over time, turmeric should be something that’s taken more regularly.
GARUDA: That would be my personal opinion, because I don’t believe that curcumin would be safe to take over, say, a couple of years. It would be much safer to take turmeric. Like I said, it’s a whole food.
KUNAL: A whole food, absolutely. Another thing, also, is because I’m confident of the source of your turmeric as being organic, it becomes something that I can actually break open a capsule of and pour over some food i’m making.
GARUDA: Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I actually – I have turmeric in a container, but I run out with cooking and I actually just quickly grab a couple of capsules and chuck it in. So yeah, absolutely.
KUNAL: Cool. In one of our earlier podcasts, we talked with Jessica Richman. She’s the CEO of a company called UBiome, who are sequencing the human microbiome. That means we’ll be able to see what bacteria are actually living in or on us. One thing she mentioned was that H. pylori is typically found in advanced stages of gastric cancers, and I bring this up because curcumin has been shown to inhibit its growth. There’s a published study on that, which we’ll link to in the transcript.
Since then, I watched a really interesting TED video called, “Can we eat to starve cancer?” That’s actually the one in which I came across this whole idea of anti-angiogenic foods.
GARUDA: Oh, I see. Okay.
KUNAL: First of all, angiogenesis is the physiological process through which new blood vessels form from pre-existing vessels, and as you can imagine, that’s something that can be beneficial to the body, but it’s also a fundamental step in the transition of a tumor from a dormant to a malignant state. What Dr. Li, who was making this presentation, advocates, is that consuming anti-angiogenic foods can actually help prevent the spread of cancer by effectively starving them.
GARUDA: Very interesting.
KUNAL: Yeah. I’m sure we all agree that prevention is better than cure, and the fact that he pointed out was that if someone has a tumor, it’s usually not detected until it becomes malignant, a serious problem. So a practical preventative step like being smart about what we eat – whole foods, including something like turmeric – can potentially add a few extra years to someone’s life.
GARUDA: Oh, absolutely. Definitely. No doubt about it. Food, like I said before, people should start viewing food differently. It’s not just what you like to eat or just something that tastes good; it’s actually medicine. People should view it as medicine. And at the same time, that means you need to view food also as poison, because there are foods out there that are poison. Just because they taste good, it doesn’t mean they’re good for you, obviously.
KUNAL: Sure.
GARUDA: That’s a very, very important thing to understand. I think people are, they are starting to come around to that. What I find fascinating about this whole angiogenesis thing is, it’s interesting how these anti-angiogenic foods don’t stop the growth of blood vessels to healthy, normal tissue. How does the body – the body’s so vast. There’s literally hundreds and thousands, if not millions, of blood vessels, tiny, tiny micro capillaries everywhere, throughout your whole body. How does the body know, “I’ll grow some this way, but not this way”? There’s obviously some intelligence there. So when you’re dealing with food, you are dealing with intelligence. There’s intelligence in the nutrients in the food, and in your body, and you’re basically bringing those two bits of intelligence together, really, and the body knows what to do with it after that.
KUNAL: I guess we’re just such complex mechanisms that understanding every single pathway that occurs is just not possible.
GARUDA: No, it’s not.
KUNAL: We just have to go back to our roots in many cases, and go, “Hey, this has worked for centuries, if not millennia.”
GARUDA: Definitely.
KUNAL: This is why the whole Paleo Diet movement is picking up so much steam now, because people are going, “Yep, this is how they used to do it back in the day. No one really had any problems, so yep, let’s go back to that.”
GARUDA: All the research in the world isn’t going to change the fact that these foods are good for you. It’s going to be the same thing, no matter what.
KUNAL: I guess one final question is, because you have things like turmeric that have been proven to be so effective, why aren’t more doctors prescribing these foods rather than prescription drugs?
GARUDA: It’s very interesting that you say that, because lately I’ve been getting people contacting me, telling me that their doctor recommended turmeric to them. So that’s why they contacted me and wanted to buy it. I have spoken to them on the phone, for one reason or another. I found it very interesting, because it seems that there is a change happening, particularly in Australia.
I can’t speak for other countries in the world. America is a bit crazy over there with health stuff. They really struggle, I think, trying to keep their health aboveboard and just above water, really, because they’re drowning in pharmaceuticals over there, and it’s a big problem. But over here it seems there’s a general trend going back.
I mean, you go back 100 years, doctors were naturopaths. That’s what the doctors were. They were homeopaths, they were naturopaths. That’s how they basically – back in the day, that’s how it was. All the doctors dealt, before pharmaceutical drugs were really invented, that’s what they did. That’s how they treated people. It was all natural, in a sense.
Then once pharmaceuticals got developed – some of them were good at the time. Penicillin, for example, was very powerful and it worked really well, and they needed it. That was a time of war, when they were in the middle of the war, people getting massive infections and dying. It really helped. But it’s a drug; it’s unnatural, so what happened? The bugs got used to it, and now penicillin doesn’t really work anymore. They can’t use it. The bug doesn’t respond.
KUNAL: Yeah, superbugs.
GARUDA: That’s the amazing thing about herbs; every bug will still – I did a lot of research into oregano oil. I’ve created a protocol to kill parasites, but basically, it doesn’t matter how powerful the parasite becomes; it’s always going to be susceptible to oregano. It doesn’t work on some particular mechanism in the cell’s cytoplasm or organelle. That’s how they do it. They find one way of how this parasite or bug or whatever, how it works, and they go on a really, really small and minute mechanical level and figure out how to stop it in that particular cell of that organism. Then, after time, that cell develops a way to resist it. So you basically get resistance to the drug, and you can’t use it anymore.
But with herbs, it doesn’t work that way. It can’t resist it; it’s almost like – this is a very crude example, I guess, on a macro level, but it’s like trying to have deer suddenly resist a lion. It’s not going to happen. In nature, that’s just the way it is. The lion can take the deer. That’s the way it is. The deer’s not going to suddenly mutate and grow vicious teeth and nails to resist it. It doesn’t work that way.
KUNAL: That’s a good visualization.
GARUDA: Yeah. You can imagine, little lions, little deer, in the body. It’s an interesting point. I think that’s something for people to think about, anyway.
KUNAL: Cool. Can you just give us a quick summary of everything you’ve talked about, with regard to turmeric and its benefits?
GARUDA: Yeah, sure. First thing to understand is turmeric should be taken as a whole food, basically because it does have carbohydrates in it, does have proteins, it has fats, volatile oils that are very powerful, has other actives like curcumin and so on. As a whole food, it’s absorbed into the body much more efficiently, and even, according to Ayurvedic principles, black pepper, and what I have discovered Piperine, is supposed to help that as well. I don’t put it in my product personally because some people are allergic to black pepper, so I’ve left it out so people can add that when they’re eating their food if they like.
KUNAL: Interesting.
GARUDA: Yeah, they do. They’re allergic to it, and they just react. So do be careful with it, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
And just understand, really, try and understand health from a point of view, whenever you’re going to the shops, or understand health from a bigger perspective, other than trying to get down to the mechanics of everything. It’s just nice to know the mechanics of how things work, and turmeric helps the liver, it helps the lungs, it helps the skin. That’s good to know, if you can understand the actual way the actives work and the mechanisms in the body and how it activates this enzyme and blocks this other enzyme and so on, and different proteins. If you can understand that, that’s great.
It’s not necessary to really understand it to that level, but it is important to be very aware of your own body and how things are working in your body. So if you take something and you’ve got – I wouldn’t say a bad reaction, but a reaction of some kind, whether it’s good or bad, be aware of it. Really be aware of it. Be aware of what you’re doing with your health and with your body and your supplements and so on.
KUNAL: Yeah, and just touching on that awareness aspect, something that our audience I think is particularly interested in is actually quantifying themselves, taking regular blood tests and doing things like UBiome’s microbiome profiling. For example, there’s a couple of companies – I use UBiome, and also another one called Talking 20, which has made the process of getting blood tests done regularly to measure specific biomarkers, the most important ones. They’re going to tell you about your health and whether a supplement or the diet you’re on is actually benefitting you. Or for example, information, cortisol levels and stress, things like that.
They just make it really, really easy. They send you something like a diabetic kit in the mail, and then you can just do a finger prick, drop a few spots of blood on a card, and then you mail it back into them. That’s something I can do every week or every month if I want to. It’s very, very economical to do that way, versus going into a doctor each time and getting a prescription and a blood test.
GARUDA: Yeah, sort of changing the whole dynamic of health and healthcare, isn’t it?
KUNAL: Yeah, it’s like you were saying; people need to be really aware of the health and how to take care of themselves, and not be reliant on the systems that we’ve been told to.
GARUDA: I believe it’s probably the most important factor in life itself, just awareness of your situation and awareness of your own body, and even your own mind. Because like you said, stress – stress is probably one of the biggest killers, I think, on earth. You can kill yourself through stress. It’s absolutely possible. I’ve got a friend who has cancer at the moment, and the stress – I actually watched her tumor grow through stress. It was unbelievable. And I watched it shrink through the opposite, of no stress. It’s unbelievable.
Don’t discount stress. It’s huge. If you have a serious illness, take supplements and really look after yourself, but if you’re in a stressful environment, get out. You need to get out. You need to do what you need to do, and then come back once you’re feeling better.
KUNAL: Yeah.
GARUDA: It’s massive, definitely.
KUNAL: Okay, cool. Is there anything else you wanted to add?
GARUDA: One other use, I think, people may not know of turmeric is wound healing. I thought I’d add that right at the end here. I’ve got a cut on my finger, and because of its anti-fungal, anti-bacterial properties, you can actually just make up a little paste of turmeric, put it on a wound, and it’ll stop it from being infected. If it’s already infected, it will help bring down the infection as well. Very powerful stuff. It’s been used in India for that purpose. Just another little tip for people, if something happens.
KUNAL: Okay, that’s awesome. This has been a great talk, Garuda. There’s so much confusion around with regard to supplements and what to take, how much to take, and what’s a good quality source. I think we’ve helped clear up a lot of that. Thanks a lot for your time; I really appreciate you coming to talk to us.
GARUDA: It’s been great to talk to you. Thanks, Kunal.
KUNAL: Yeah. We’re actually stocking organic turmeric now on OptimOZ. This is the highest quality turmeric in Australia. And once again, Garuda, thanks a lot for making yourself available to us all.
GARUDA: All right, you’re welcome. Take care.
KUNAL: Cheers.
