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New Study Shows Turmeric Is Surprisingly Beneficial For Blood Sugar
Spices pack a lot of nutritional benefits into a small bite. These powders are bursting with beneficial plant compounds that have far-reaching health benefits.
For example, ginger provides gingerols that help soothe the digestive tract. Cinnamon provides cinnamaldehyde that may support insulin sensitivity. Turmeric provides curcumin, which is most known for its anti-inflammatory effects.
But curcumin also appears to play a meaningful role in blood sugar balance. And researchers recently investigated whether taking a curcumin supplement (a concentrated source of turmeric’s active component) improved already high blood sugar levels1.
Here’s what you need to know.
About the study
This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial included 28 adults (all over the age of 60) who had prediabetes or obesity.
Prediabetes is a specific classification indicating that your blood sugar is higher than normal for maintaining good health, but isn’t high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes.
Think of it as an early warning sign of insulin resistance—that your body is not responding to the hormone that helps move glucose from your bloodstream into your cells effectively.
Participants were randomly assigned to take 80 milligrams of curcumin or a placebo daily for 12 weeks, and researchers measured their fasting blood glucose, HbA1c (a longer-term measure of blood sugar control), weight, cholesterol, and gut bacteria.
Curcumin helped lower blood sugar metrics
Even after just 12 weeks, those who took the curcumin supplement daily saw their HbA1c levels drop, suggesting improvements in blood sugar management, as it can take three months for HbA1c levels to change.
When comparing the curcumin group to the placebo group as a whole, the difference wasn’t statistically significant—not enough to fully prove curcumin was the cause.
But the researchers made a point to mention that this drop is still meaningful, especially since other studies found curcumin helps lower HbA1c too, but usually with much higher doses (like 1500 mg/day).
What about the other measures?
This was a pretty short study evaluating a low dose of curcumin, and there were no significant changes in weight or cholesterol.
So, curcumin’s benefit for HbA1c likely wasn’t because people lost weight. Rather, it could indicate that curcumin improves how the body uses insulin.
How to supplement
Turmeric and curcumin supplements can be a helpful tool in blood sugar balance as well as calming inflammation (especially around the joints).
But taking a low dose, like the one from this study, may not produce the results that you want. And taking too high a dose also has its downside.
Research indicates that a range of 500 milligrams to 1,000 milligrams of turmeric root extract is sufficient for supporting overall health.
The lower end of that range is ideal for supplements that optimize for absorption and include piperine and utilize polar-nonpolar sandwiching of the turmeric extract (technology that makes turmeric extract nearly 6 times more bioavailable than other turmeric options.
We know this is a lot to remember, so we gathered our top 14 expert-vetted picks here.
The takeaway
While turmeric is most known for its anti-inflammatory properties, don’t sleep on turmeric’s (especially turmeric supplements) ability to help with blood sugar balance.
If you’re also looking to add more turmeric to your diet, here are a few ways to do so.
