Chapter 62
Ginger
For 13 years, about 9500 people over age 80, 9500 people over age 90, and 8500 people over age 100 from 23 Chinese provinces were followed to investigate the effect of garlic consumption on the oldest of the old. Compared with those who rarely ate garlic, the death rate among those who ate garlic at least five times a week was about 10 percent lower, meaning they lived about a year longer overall. The researchers suspect that a reduction in cardiovascular disease played a role. Those who eat at least one large clove of garlic a day or the equivalent appear to have better arterial function than those who consume less, but whether there is a causal relationship we will know only when we study it.
See in my video see.nf/garlic how an extraordinary series of intervention trials shows that a quarter teaspoon of garlic powder can sensationally improve arterial function while also slowing the progression of atherosclerosis, whereas a placebo cannot. Garlic can also significantly lower cholesterol levels, as well as blood pressure. If good old garlic powder can do that, what about those fancy Kyolic supplements with extracts of aged garlic? They cost about 30 times as much and don’t seem to have any effect at all.
As I discuss in detail in How Not to Diet, overweight men and women can lose almost three kilos of pure body fat with a quarter teaspoon of garlic powder per day in 15 weeks compared with the placebo group. In the chapter “Maintaining the Immune System,” I will address this immune-strengthening effect. A systematic review found that plant-based medicines can have positive effects, with few or no side effects, and are “relatively cost-effective compared to other medicines.” I see it the same way, since we’re talking about single-digit cents a day.
Away with you, bloodsuckers!
There are no data yet on garlic for vampire defense, but it can protect us from other bloodsuckers. See see.nf/repellent, but in summary, it has been shown that garlic consumption doesn’t do anything against mosquitoes, but it can reduce the number of tick bites (though not to the same extent as permethrin repellent spray on clothing).
Ginger
For thousands of years, ginger has been used in China and India to treat illnesses. In India, ginger is known as maha-aushadhi, “the great medicine.” Of course, mercury was also prescribed in Indian and Chinese medicine, so there are limits when we fall back on “traditional use.” That’s what we have science for.
There are more than 100 published randomized controlled trials with ginger. Most commonly it is used for nausea and vomiting. Forty years ago, it was first shown in a head-to-head comparison that ginger worked better than Dramamine. Volunteers were blindfolded, and they were spun over and over again in a tilted rotating chair. Today ginger is considered a nontoxic broad-spectrum antiemetic that successfully combats nausea during travel, in pregnancy, after chemotherapy, during radiation treatment, and after surgery. Just sniffing ginger essence is enough.
In randomized, placebo-controlled double-blind trials, ginger has been shown to help treat osteoarthritis, PMS, and menstrual pain; it prevents and treats migraine-related headaches; and it lowers cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure, excess weight, as well as signs of oxidative stress and inflammation—typically for a few cents a day—in powder form like you can get at any grocery store. During drying, the pungent component of fresh ginger, 6-gingerol, is converted into 6-shogaol (from the Japanese word for ginger), which may work even better.
The residents of Okinawa traditionally eat shell ginger, a species in the same family that is considered separately. Extracts from shell ginger leaves increase the lifespan of C. elegans, but who eats ginger leaves? Strictly speaking, we don’t eat the roots either, but rather the rhizome, an underground part of the stem. Thankfully, 6-shogaol, the dehydration product in common ginger, can increase the average life expectancy of C. elegans by more than 25 percent.
This increase in lifespan may be related to protection of DNA. If a tissue sample is taken from any person, perhaps 7 percent of the cells show signs of DNA damage—that is, breaks in the DNA strands. If such cells are then bombarded with free radicals, even more damage is triggered, up to 11 percent. But if the person in question eats one and a half teaspoons of ginger powder per day for a week, the amount of DNA damage induced by oxidative stress drops by about 25 percent to 8 percent of the cells, similar to if the person had eaten the same amount of rosemary. The scientists also ran the experiment with cumin, paprika, sage, and turmeric. The first three don’t seem to do anything in this regard, but turmeric worked.
Turmeric
Turmeric is another typical component of traditional Okinawan cuisine that promotes longevity in model organisms—namely in yeast, invertebrates, and mammals. Turmeric components extended the average lifespan of C. elegans by 39 percent; in fruit flies it was 20 percent; and in mice 12 percent, and anti-aging effects were also seen in the brains of old rats.
In the DNA-damage experiment in which participants ate different spices in typical amounts for a week before their cells were bombarded with free radicals, turmeric came out on top. Just a pinch of turmeric a day reduced DNA damage by 55 percent. And this was no mysterious turmeric extract; the participants ate one eighth of a teaspoon of turmeric per day, the kind you can get at any store. Here turmeric wasn’t mixed with cells in some Petri dish. Here they simply compared what happened to the cells of participants who consumed a small amount of the spice each week in a randomized trial, by counting only the DNA breaks.
When they counted the DNA breaks in the participants’ cells before and after a week of spice consumption without free radicals coming into play, there was no significant intrinsic protective function seen in the ginger or rosemary groups. Even so, turmeric reduced DNA damage by about 40 percent. That may be because turmeric stimulates the activity of our own antioxidant enzymes. One of the most active enzymes in our body is catalase. Each of these enzymes can neutralize millions of free radicals per second. If we eat the equivalent of about three quarters of a teaspoon of turmeric daily for a month, it can boost the activity of the enzyme catalase in the blood by more than 50 percent. If you take a half teaspoon of turmeric and black pepper in a 50 to 1 ratio daily for five days before radiation therapy, it lowers oxidative damage by 50 percent more than the placebo group.
For an overview of the clinical effects of turmeric and both well-founded and unfounded reservations about it, see see.nf/turmericskeptic. In my Daily Dozen, I recommend a quarter teaspoon of turmeric every day.
Smoothie Okinawa Style
I experimented and developed a recipe for a delicious bright purple smoothie that tastes like pumpkin pie. The sweet potato gives it a special silky-smooth texture. In my upcoming How Not to Age Cookbook there will be many more recipes, but here is this one to whet your appetite:
Scrub a purple sweet potato clean under running water, then poke it a few times with a fork. Pop it into the microwave on high until it feels soft. When the potato has cooled enough to handle, cut it in half and freeze both halves. (Use one half for this recipe and the other when you get an eerie craving for this smoothie again.) Put all the ingredients into the blender and blend until it’s a smoothie.