Heart failure and curcumin

Heart failure affects many Americans, about 6 million, due to an increase in obesity and other heart related illnesses. There is something called reduced ejection fraction which is when people with heart failure have a problem with the left ventricle which is the ventricle that pumps blood to the rest of the body. People with this also have a hard time exercising because their their antioxidant enzymes are lower than normal and their oxidative stress causes there to be an imbalance of molecules that can result in cell damage.

Curcumin, the main ingredient in curry, has been used to help with gastrointestinal sickness for years. Recent studies have shown that this can be used for more than just that purpose. This study gave curcumin to mice with and without heart failure and had their respective control groups of mice. Then they had them test their capacity to exercise; they were given this for 12 weeks.

They thought that a certain protein that regulates the expression of antioxidant enzymes (Nrf2) would be helped by curcumin and promote the expression of these enzymes. They ended up finding that curcumin helped their capacity to exercise, not only in the mice with heart failure but also the healthy mice. This could provide an easy way to help patients with heart failure increase their ability to exercise and also their health overall.

Curry Spice Boosts Exercise Performance in Mice with Heart Failure. (2018, November 29). Retrieved from http://www.the-aps.org/mm/hp/Audiences/Public-Press/2018/74.html

Wafi, A. M., Hong, J., Rudebush, T. L., Yu, L., Hackfort, B. T., Wang, H., . . . Gao, L. (2018). Curcumin Improves Exercise Performance of Mice with Coronary Artery Ligation Induced HFrEF: Nrf2 and Antioxidant Mechanisms in Skeletal Muscle. Journal of Applied Physiology. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00654.2018