Golden rule:

Most powerful antioxidants are a concentrated form of natural antioxidant-rich herbs. On top of the list will be essential oils, herbal extracts, dried herbs, and powders. Then we will have dried fruit, and superfoods like antioxidant-rich fruit, raw nuts, and seeds and vegetables. Then there will be regular fruit, and regular vegetables, and then at the very end a whole list of animal products that have no antioxidant value and are pro-inflammatory.

Milos Pokimica

Spices or herbs.

When you look and go down at the list of the most potent antioxidant-rich food sources you will notice that most of the items will be different spices or herbs.

Rosemary, meadowsweet, peppermint, thyme, wild marjoram, cinnamon, turmeric, lemon balm, sage, allspice, oregano, and so on.

Most of these spices and herbs will be used in normal cooking but only in small amounts and sporadically.

Sometimes even a pinch of them will have an impact on overall levels of consumed antioxidants.

If we want a real increase in our antioxidant intake realistically it would be a hard time doing it with just spices and herbs. What we can do is use them as a supplement.

For example, you can mix turmeric and ground pepper, and amla and take a teaspoon of it every day with water as a supplement. That will be a more significant increase in antioxidant intake instead of eating curry as a spice with a meal. There is a long list of potent spices and some are stronger than others but there is a question about their antioxidant bioavailability.

Bioavailability.

One of the main reasons why USDA removed the ORAC database is because of bioavailability. People were starting to do the same thing that I do. They started to do something they don’t like. ORAC values started to directly influence consumer decisions.

Because not all plants are made equal and some have much greater nutrient density than others people would choose to eat a more nutrient-dense diet. The problem is that the entire ORAC value database is derived from in vitro studies that involve just exposing a substance to oxygen and measuring the result. This might not correlate to real in vivo effects inside a body. Even if it does it might cause other health problems. A good example of this would be Sangre De Grado as the number one measured antioxidant superstar that showed a mutagenic effect on some strains of bacteria in vivo. This means that Sangre De Grado could be a natural antibiotic that targets only some strains of bacteria or it could mean that it is just a plain mutagen where some bacteria are just more resilient. I don’t know. Traditionally it is used for the common cold, upper airway infections, ulcers, and many other conditions. I am just using this as an example for the entire field. This is a vast topic that we can learn more about as research is done.

This is a reason why we need to have extensive research into this topic in the first place. ORAC values are just initial guidelines. Studies that measure the direct anti-inflammatory effect of antioxidant-rich food sources are more valid if we want to have real-life choices. The problem is that most of these studies do not have a patent at end of the research and also can be in direct competition for consumer choices. For example, one phytochemical extracted from Sangre de Grado was approved as a drug by the FDA for diarrhea in people with AIDS. Someone might decide to take supplemental antioxidants as whole food sources of these phytochemicals instead big pharma medicine. And this is a big problem that limits the amount of available research.

In vivo results.

If we want to see real in vivo results on the effect of spices to see what they do and if they do anything in doses that are used in normal cooking, we can look at some studies. In this study (1) they feed subjects with different types of spices for a week. The quantity they used and this is very important is just a small amount that people get in a normal diet like for example 0.3 grams of cloves or up to 2.8 grams of ginger. They used just 0.3 grams of turmeric per day, 0.3 g/day of cayenne pepper, 1.7 g/day of paprika, 1.7 g/day of Saigon cinnamon, 2.8 g/day of cumin, Mediterranean oregano 1.1 g/day, black pepper 2.8 g/day, rosemary 2.8 g/day, dalmatian sage 1.7 g/day, clove 0.3 g/day and ginger 2.8 g/day. After a week, they drew blood and then dropped that blood onto human white blood cells that had been exposed to oxidized cholesterol. Then researchers measured how much inflammatory cytokines white blood cells produced in response. They wanted to see how much eating different spices will lower inflammatory response and also how much will they protect DNA. This is the closest we can get to measuring the real-life influence of some food because they did not just measure the antioxidant level in the blood or they did not just use a  spice like for example turmeric and measure its effects directly.

They used the blood of people that have been eating spices in realistic dosages.

The result was that cloves, ginger, rosemary, and turmeric were able to significantly stifle the inflammatory response while black pepper, cayenne, cinnamon, cumin, oregano, paprika, sage, and heated turmeric did nothing.

DNA damage.

They also measured the impact on DNA damage.

Paprika, rosemary, ginger, heat-treated turmeric, sage, and cumin protected against DNA strand breaks.

This does not automatically mean that other spices are useless and not bioavailable. There is a possibility of that. It means two things, they might not be bioavailable or that dosages were low to elicit an effect.

In regards to DNA protection in normal conditions, people will have 7 to 10 percent of their DNA in tissue samples damaged. The body repairs damage all the time and some DNA damage in 7 to 10 cells in every 100 cells is considered normal. Usually, people that have a bad diet have around 10 percent. In the study, ginger has broth down this number from 10 to 8, rosemary to 7, and turmeric to 4.5.

Just a small pinch of 0.3 grams of turmeric was able to bring down DNA damage in half. This is for heat-treated turmeric, the raw turmeric showed no effect while exactly the opposite was found for the anti-inflammatory effect. Heat-treated turmeric showed no effect on inflammation while raw powder did. It seems that we should consume both forms of turmeric. This result means that antioxidants and in this case spices and especially turmeric have the ability to prolong life.

Basic mix.

Back in the day when I first started incorporating this knowledge into my life, I started with a basic mix of turmeric powder and ground black pepper. I didn’t take any of the supplements I just used ground turmeric powder that I purchased in a regular health food store. At the beginning that was all I did. Every morning I took one teaspoon of turmeric and black pepper mix. Later when I learned more about nutrition, I started to change some of my grocery decisions. I have already been eating mostly vegan whole food healthy diet but I still managed to increase substantially the level of antioxidants that I consume.

For people that don’t want to do this and that still want to eat oil and meat and sugar and all of the rest of the unhealthy foods, one easy step will be to do what I did.

Just go to the health food store and get some turmeric.

More potent basic mix.

The next step for me was to add other potent sources to the recipe.

The amount of turmeric we can safely consume is not that large. The upper limit is about 10 grams per day because it has high amounts of bioavailable oxalic acid. The safe upper limit for most people is 10 grams but 5 grams of it is an optimal dose.

To increase the potency of the recipe without increasing turmeric to unhealthy levels I added other antioxidants to the mix that were found to decrease inflammation in the study I referenced. I added dried ginger, rosemary, and cloves that I got from a health food store as well.

My recipe.

This was my recipe for a couple of years until a discovered the research behind amla and then added amla as well.

This doesn’t mean you should do this if you are happy with just turmeric then go with that or you can make your recipe. This is the mixture that I created based on clinical studies for myself. I personally only use amla because I don’t know the source of the most of ayurvedic herbal dietary supplements that I would buy. Regrettably, one in five Ayurvedic herbal dietary supplements including Triphala were found contaminated with lead, mercury, or arsenic. Amla or Indian gooseberry is found the be noncontaminated same as turmeric so I will use just these two that I know are safe. Triphala has two more Indian medicinal spices besides Indian gooseberry.

Today I take 10 to 15 grams of this mix every morning and this will give me a value of around 10,000 to 20,000 ORAC units. One spoonful of this mixture will have more antioxidants than what the average American that eats a standard American diet will consume in a whole week. Plus, on top of antioxidants, there are other phytochemicals in there as well that have beneficial properties for the immune system, cognitive function, and endocrine function. Because this is a whole-food mixture there will be a food synergy effect as well.

The best thing about this is that you can make this “supplement” yourself and it is dirt cheap.

If you don’t want to do anything regarding your health and diet and don’t want to change anything then just do this one thing. It will benefit you more than any other health intervention. The worst thing about this is the taste. It is very nasty. The way I do it is I just put it directly into my mouth and then I drink water and swallow. I tried to mix it in with juice or water or in tea, and it didn’t help. As soon as it hits any type of liquid it starts to soak up and then it will bulk up and will release all of its taste to that liquid making it even worse. After I created this form of the antioxidant-rich herbal mix, I created more advanced by also much more expensive ones. In my view for most of the population, this mixture will be enough.

Conclusion:

• Most powerful antioxidants are a concentrated form of natural antioxidant-rich herbs.
• Most of these spices and herbs will be used in normal cooking but only in small amounts and sporadically.
• Sometimes even a pinch of them will have an impact on overall levels of consumed antioxidants.
• We can use spices as a supplement.
• ORAC values are just initial guidelines.
• Studies that measure the direct anti-inflammatory effect of antioxidant-rich food sources in vivo are more valid if we want to have real-life choices.
• Cloves, ginger, rosemary, and turmeric significantly stifle the inflammatory response.
• Black pepper, cayenne, cinnamon, cumin, oregano, paprika, sage, and heated turmeric do not show anti-inflammatory effects in realistic cooking dosages.
• Paprika, rosemary, ginger, heat-treated turmeric, sage, and cumin protect against DNA strand breaks.
• 0.3 grams of heat-treated turmeric was able to bring down DNA damage in half.
• Heat-treated turmeric showed no effect on inflammation while raw powder did.
• Started with a basic mix of raw turmeric powder and ground black pepper and add some turmeric into cooking.
• The amount of turmeric we can safely consume is not that large.
• My more advanced but still basic recipe: turmeric, black pepper, ginger, rosemary, cloves, and amla.
• You can safely make your recipe by adding other medicinal herbs to the list.
• I take 10 to 15 grams of this mix every morning before the meal with an essential oil mix that I make for increased potency and bioavailability.
• One spoonful of this mixture will have more antioxidants than what the average American that eats a standard American diet will consume in a whole week.
• This is a whole-food mixture with other phytochemicals.
• There will be a food synergy effect as well.
• There are more advanced formals and supplements but much more expensive.
• You can make this “supplement” yourself and it is dirt cheap.

Passages selected from a book: “Go Vegan? Review of Science: Part 3” [Milos Pokimica]

• Bioavailability of herbs and spices in humans as determined by ex vivo inflammatory suppression and DNA strand breaks. J Am Coll Nutr. 2012 Aug;31(4):288-94
• The total antioxidant content of more than 3100 foods, beverages, spices, herbs and supplements used worldwide doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-9-3.
• Antioxidant Activity of Spices and Their Impact on Human Health: A Review doi: 10.3390/antiox6030070
• Mutagenic and antioxidant activities of Croton lechleri sap in biological systems doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2004.08.025.

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