How Turmeric’s Amazing Benefits Can Improve Your Health with JJ Virgin
15 Dec 2025 · 8 min
JJ Virgin hosts a solo podcast episode focused on turmeric (curcumin), summarizing decades of traditional use and dozens of studies that the host says support turmeric's anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, cardioprotective, neuroprotective, anti-diabetic, anti-arthritic, and anti-cancer properties. The episode explains that curcumin is poorly absorbed in food and recommends highly bioavailable supplementation (and taking with fat). JJ describes clinical studies (authors named) claiming effects comparable to NSAIDs for inflammation/arthritis, lifespan extension in animals, improved endothelial and cognitive function, protection of insulin-producing cells, and reduced progression to type 2 diabetes in at-risk humans. The host endorses a commercial product (Curcumin Chews) and gives practical dosing guidance (minimum ~100 mg/day; ~300 mg/day for active inflammation), links show notes at jjvirgin.com/turmeric, and includes multiple sponsor/read adverts and listener shout-outs.
Questions this episode answers
~100 milligrams per day (described as the least she wants you to get).
Around 300 milligrams per day (can be taken once daily; curcumin is fat-soluble).
Curcumin Chews (the host-created product).
jjvirgin.com/turmeric
Chapters
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Gosh, when you have like the epidemic that we have with diabetes, of course I want you to do all the things you can do for lifestyle. But you know, if you're looking at reversing it right now and you're looking at getting everything back in control, turmeric is a super important thing to throw in there.
Here's jj, virgin triple board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time New York Times bestselling author. It's time to reignite wellness.
Hey, it's JJ and today I'm doing a solo on turmeric or turmeric or curcumin. Anyway, we, we get asked about this all, all, all the time and it is something that I have been taking supplementally for years and using with my friends and family. So I figured I should like stop keeping it a secret and tell you why. So we're going to be talking today about the amazing benefits of turmeric. Honestly, this has been used for thousands of years, so it's kind of like this, you know, ancient secret found in Asian cuisines. Plus it tastes great and it has crazy big health effects for both your body and your brain. So I'm going to dive in and chat about that. We'll have some very cool show notes as always, and I'm going to put those@jjvirgin.com Turmeric. How the heck does one spell turmeric, you ask? Well, T U R M E R I C. So turmeric or turmeric, but there's a T U r in there, so make sure you get it and you can grab those show notes. I'm going to have some links. You'll see as we start to talk to some of the research, but also some goodies that I use every single day. My, my yummy, delicious way to take curcumin. All right, before we dive into this, I want to do a little shout out to pet junkie who says JJ is on the top of her game. I've been following JJ since the virgin diet. I'm a nurse and I think the medical field is behind the times when it comes to nutrition and weight loss. I will read something in a medical journal and think this is old news. JJ talked about this last year. I love that you practice what you preach. I love the variety of guests on the show who have something super interesting to tell us. Even if it doesn't pertain to you that know someone it does pertain to. This podcast has opened my eyes to things I thought were close to a hoax, like tapping or essential oils. Hey, before you judge them, try them. There's something to all this stuff. My favorite part, of course, is a science rationale. I love to hear how and why something works. It just makes sense. I appreciate and learn something from every episode. Thank you for teaching the world about nutrition and everything that goes along with it. And thank you Pet Junkie. I would love to do a shout out so if you've not jumped in and rated a review yet, you can rate and review every single show and I'll shout you out. Make sure you leave your name in there too so I can say it by name. And I've got one more thing to share with you and then I'll be back talking all things Kirk Heumann. So stay with me.
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Alrighty, I'm back. We are going to be digging in to deconstructing turmeric. First of all, let's talk about the basics. Why the heck would you want to take. Well, loads of research and I'm going to be digging into some of it today. It's going to be a heady show that turmeric or curcumin, that's the active part of turmeric can aid in fighting and preventing cancer, arthritis and type 2 diabetes. So turmeric and curcumin I'm going to use, I'm going to say turmeric but they're the same things. Curcumin is the antioxidant and anti inflammatory that's found in turmeric that gives it that bright orange yellow color that also by the way can stain your fingernails, I have discovered. So you which is very cool when something's that powerful. Right. Turmeric can be found in your favorite curry dishes but sadly enough, you just can't eat enough of that curry to make the, you know, get the benefits that you really want in your body. It's also super hard to absorb. You're going to want to always take a very highly bioavailable supplement. We'll talk about that later and always and or take it with fat. But again what I find is when we start to talk about the benefits today, in order to get the benefits that we're talking about, you're going to want and need to supplement and you're going to want to use the supplements that that's been formulated to absorb well because it just doesn't absorb that well. All right, so let's dig in and I'm going to walk you through the six health benefits of turmeric and the studies that back it all up. All right, so the first one is that curcumin and this is really the big one. Curcumin can help fight inflammation and as you know, inflammation is a factor. And like all the major diseases, heart disease, autoimmune disease, osteoarthritis, such as we can just go down the list. Of course, it also can lead to premature aging. It can create weight loss resistance, it can cause digestive distress. On and on and on. No bueno. There's nothing, there's nothing great you can say there. So I think of turmeric as nature's NSAID without all those nasty side effects. And that's what's super cool is that when you look at a lot of these nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs, they cause leaky gut which then creates more inflammation and pain, which then creates more NSAID use which then creates more leaky gut. Round and round we go. And not in a good way. So what's cool about turmeric is that early clinical STY trials have shown that it has the same effects as NSAIDs but with none of the risks. And that's what I love about nutrients is they have all the good and generally none of the bad. So there you go. And then they're also along with this study, and it was a study by Agarwal and Harak Kumar, this study also showed that epidemiological data suggests that consuming places that consume more turmeric have lesser rates of chronic illness. All right, next, defending against aging, which is why I pop my curcumin shoes every single day. And studies show that turmeric can help reverse, you heard it here, reverse aging. This was a study by McDonald's, Kubre and, and friends I always say at all and it's like and the rest of them. Turmeric was found to expand the lifespans of several agents animals of varying species and by the way expand the lifespan like things just don't expand lifespans like. So a bold statement to say reverse aging. It's combats damage done from senescence or slow degradation to the body due to age. Senescence is cell death. High doses of turmeric help the body, its cells and repair the harm of the aging process on the body. All right, next up, a study by Chandran and Goel showed that it can improve arthritis. Now this would make a ton of sense because of its anti inflammatory properties. This was a study that showed that it reduces symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis better than prescription anti inflammatory drugs. There was a randomized study done on 45 patients with arthritis. So here's another one just on straight. Arthritis osteoarthritis. And the patients took both turmeric, turmeric and an nsaid. Turmeric showed the highest performance in treating arthritic pain and helped alleviate much of its symptoms without the risk of side effects. This is really, really big news, by the way. And I will tell you that when I've gone through some of my, actually all of my surgeries and my son's had to go through some too. He tore his acl, he pulled his tibial tuberosity off his tibia. I had an old, old, old injury from when I was 17 where I blew out my ACL, multiple surgeries and finally just, you know, finally had to go and get a knee replacement. They told me I was going to have to have that like 35. I put it off till I was 50 plus. So I thought that was pretty amazing. But I used curcumin to be able to get through the surgery and barely have to use any pain medication. So super cool. And this is just something that can be great to use for pain and inflammation. But honestly, again, we'll talk about the end. I'm kind of jumping ahead of myself. I just, I think you're gonna see here, it's like this is when you're going to want to add in every single day. All right? And especially because of this one. Protect your heart health. This was a couple studies I'm going to talk about Wong, Charon and Akazawa. So first one, turmeric can help prevent dangerous risk factors for heart disease as well as improve cholesterol levels and protect the lining of blood vessels. And it can also help protect the body from diabetic damage and further shield cardiovascular health. All right. It also improves the benefits of aerobic exercise. And this was a study done on postmenopausal women that revealed that with exercise, turmeric help improve age related decline of endothelial function. That's how well your endothelial lining will function. This is very important for our adult. And basically, so what do we know here is turmeric plus exercise equals great impact on your. Great big positive impact on your heart health. Okay? And it's not just your heart, my friends, it's also your brain. So here's some more studies. One by Nam, one by Susan. I think that's more Suzanne. Anyway, multiple studies showing that turmeric can trigger the growth of new cells that play an important role in learning and memory. So they did a study on aged mice who were given turmeric to help them improve their speed when navigating a series of mazes. Their abilities in learning and spatial memory improve their. And this is further backed up by a different study that used old lab rats that were fed a turmeric based diet. Their abilities in non spatial and spatial memory were Enhanced compared to the control who were not fed a turmeric centered diet. In short, turmeric has been shown in studies to possibly have properties that can potentially enhance brain function. So I just want you to think of that when you are drinking that spice turmeric latte and I'm going to give you the recipe for that one. For the healthy one. Do not go down to that. The coffee shop that will not be named and have the turmeric spaced lot spiced latte, the golden latte. You will get a load of sugar and the sugar will undo all the good that the curcumin is doing. So we don't go there right, but we'll give you a great one that's indulgent without being indulgent. It just feels that way. Super fun. Okay, next one. Preventing serious disease. Okay, lots of studies on this one by oh my gosh, these names, Chwing, Samarn and Rivendron. A lot of Indian names and Indonesian names and challenging countries where they do a lot more with curcumin. They're ahead of us. So the studies have shown that turmeric can protect insulin producing cells from damage and prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes. In a double blind placebo controlled test of diabetic individuals who were fed turmeric, it was shown that turmeric was able to red reduce the number of pre diabetic individuals who are progressing towards getting type 2 diabetes. I mean that is, that is super duper crazy huge. So if you look at it, it's keeping the insulin producing cells from damage. So and it looks like here it's also helping with some insulin sensitivity too. But gosh, when you have like the epidemic that we have with diabetes, of course I want you to do all the things you can do for lifestyle. But, but you know, if you're looking at reversing it right now and you're looking at getting everything back in control, turmeric is a super important thing to throw in there. Now let's talk cancer because the research has also shown that turmeric has anti cancer properties. It's been found to induce cell death in various types of cancer cells and tumors. And because of the way turmeric interacts with the body, it's also unlikely that cancer cells will develop a resistance to it. Which is super interesting because that's what cancer cells will remember. It said that it was protecting some cells from cell death, but targeting cancer cells now. So that's awesome. So you know, again I look at this as something we should be doing every single day. And I'm going to be back in a moment. To sum it all up, tell you what, you could be taking every single day to get what you need, talk dosing all of that stuff. So stay with me. Saving on your education should be a right, not a competition. At University of Phoenix, you'll get the best scholarship or savings you qualify for. Simple as that. Explore scholarship options at University of Phoenix. All right, so here is the deal. We love us some curry, no question, or that golden milk latte, but I want you to think of turmeric as much more than just that yummy spice that makes things look so pretty and taste so good. It has got health benefits for your brain, for your heart. It helps prevent serious disease. It fights inflammation, improves arthritis, can help reverse aging. I mean, come on. Again, I look at these things and go, if that was a prescription drug, everyone would be prescribing it it so. But thankfully, it's protected. They cannot turn it into a prescription drug and charge a gazillion dollars for it. There you go. So it's a very safe spice and, you know, tastes delicious and has a lot of great benefits. The challenge with it is that it's hard to absorb. And so. And if you're eating it in food, you always want to make sure you have some fat with it, too, because that's critical for absorption, but likely for you to get the amount you need, you're going to want to supplement. And kind of 100 milligrams a day is sort of the least that I want to make sure that you get. And if you're working on, I'm not worried about you getting too much, but what I would tell you is if you are fighting any kind of inflammation or any of the health challenges that we talked about, I would be doing more around 300 milligrams a day. You don't have to take that dose throughout the day because it's fat soluble. So you could take it once a day. And the way I like to take it is with this product that we created called Curcumin Chews. They're like Sunshine Chews. They're bright yellow, orange because of the curcumin, and they taste like a yummy kind of orangey nectarine skittle. Like, they're totally delicious but no sugar added. Of course, not on my watch. Instead, we're using allulose, which I will link to my podcast, where I talk about sweeteners and I talk about allulose and how amazing it is and also link to the curcumin chews because it's so great and also link to the spice turmeric latte because come on, we definitely want to add that into the mix. So again this is one that you're going to want to have in your repertoire. It is just there's so many things that it's good for. There's a reason that's been used for thousands of years and so let's make sure that we keep that tradition going because that tradition is one things that's kept us healthy. So add it on in and let me know what you think of those curcumin shoes because I think they are amazing. So again, I'll put that all@jjvirgin.com forward/turmeric, t U R M E R I C and Big Ask rate and review. Love to get your feedback. Also, if you've got any questions or anything you'd love to to hear more about, just leave it on in that that area so that we can pick it up and I will shout you out next time. So for sure your name is in there too. All right, See ya. Thanks. Foreign.
Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.
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