Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
INDIA, July 24, 2009: Modern science has substantiated the extraordinary healing power of turmeric. A team of scientists led by Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy , an IIT Kanpur alumnus and a professor of chemistry and biophysics at the University of Michigan, has deciphered the exact functioning of curcumin, a major ingredient of turmeric powder, in curing wounds, infections and other health problems.
“In our recent research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, we found that curcumin molecules insert themselves into the cell membrane and sit quite comfortably in its greasy layer. This makes curcumin behave like cholesterol and stabilize the membrane such that invaders like bacteria, virus and other micro-organisms find it very difficult to destabilize the cell membrane structure, thereby increasing the cells’ resistance to infection by disease-causing microbes,” says Ramamoorthy.