Picture of regular store-bought turmeric powder. Dull-yellow or brown-orange color, indicating the powder has been exposed to air for a long time. This type of turmeric is only suitable as a food-coloring agent and not as a supplement.

The bright and lovely color of fresh, unoxidized turmeric root. It’s almost glowing, due to curcumin’s ability to convert UV light to yellow. 

Bad News: Regular, Store-Bought Turmeric Has Very Poor Gut Absorption. Most of It Is Oxidized and Only Suitable for Food Coloring

We have all heard that turmeric is great – it promotes radiant skin, weight loss, has many cognitive and brain benefits and can work better for pain than over the counter pain relievers! Recently, some publications explored the effectiveness of turmeric for depression and the results were very promising.
Virtually all benefit-showing studies done on turmeric, use ethanol-aqueous extracts from fresh roots. This is very different from regular, store-bought turmeric. Gut absorption of turmeric is quite low (study) and gets even lower with age, because of the reduced ability of the liver to produce bile.
Fortunately, there are ways around this! Let’s explore some great options to get all the benefits of turmeric, without having access to lab-grade turmeric extracts.

Best Option: Use Full-Range Micelle Turmeric to Get All The Health Benefits Turmeric is Known For! (Link)

This is arguably the most effective way to put turmeric in your body and actually feel, notice and experience the actual benefits turmeric is known for. Micelle turmeric uses extremely tiny droplets(about 200 times smaller than the emulsion droplets that butter consists of for example), suspended in a liquid to bypass the digestive process and ‘transport’ the turmeric straight into your cells, where it can do it’s magic – it’s the closest thing to an ‘anti-aging injection’ that you’ll find. Even compared to high-quality unoxidized turmeric extract, micelle turmeric has up to 200-times higher absorption rate and quickly gets delivered around the cells in the body.
As amazing as micelle liposomal turmeric is, it does have a slight downside – its higher price. Since making micelle solutions requires lab testing to confirm that particle size is small enough to get absorbed right through membranes, this does raise the cost slightly.
Micelle turmeric is ingested normally(orally) – because of it’s high concentration and bio-availability, only a few drops are required to experience the effects.

Option 2: Find Fresh Turmeric Root, Blend With Some Water and Coconut oil, and Add Black Pepper

The second best way to absorb turmeric is to simply get a high-quality powder or just fresh root. It’s impossible to tell with a 100% certainty how good certain turmeric powder is, without lab testing, but the color of the powder is a good indication – look for a bright, vibrant orange or yellow color. Low quality turmeric is immediately obvious by it’s ‘dullness’ – it just doesn’t look that good. If you find a high-quality powder, you can use that to make turmeric milk(recipe), which has decent absorption, due to the fat content of the milk.

1. The Hunger-Eliminating Avocado Smoothie

This smoothie may seem too high in calories to support your weight-loss goals, but it actually lowers your total caloric intake by reducing hunger pangs and provides important nutrients to keep your metabolism going. The key is the avocado and almond fat, combined with the fiber content and the high potassium.  Potassium is one of the most important minerals for a satiating breakfast! This smoothie is also pretty high in protein, which is extremely important for weight loss. There is plenty of evidence that just making your first meal of the day a high-protein one will get you on the right track to weight loss.

Half an Avocado
1 Ounce of Almonds
1 Banana
A bit of honey (optional)
A cup of water

2. The Antioxidant Bomb

This smoothie contains a very high amount of anthocyanins and phytonutrients. It is helpful if you feel fatigued in the morning, if you are going to be exposed to strong oxidants, like cigarette smoke, sunlight or fast food. Since it’s quite acidic, it also helps with digestion and weight loss. Acid, found in vegetables neutralizes and cleanses the alkaline waste products that occur any time you ingest protein (like homocysteine). So, starting with an acidic drink full of antioxidants is a great way to prime your metabolism in the morning.

200 grams of frozen red cabbage
1 handful of blueberries
1 banana
1 cup yogurt
A dash of vanilla
A cup of water

The yogurt is there to ensure that our smoothie contains some fat! This improves the absorption of antioxidants and slows it down, providing a “timed release”. Unfortunately, this smoothie is not as good-tasting as many others, but it does include bitterness-suppressing and bad-taste-masking ingredients, so it isn’t that bad! As a general rule, the more bitter and generally “unpleasant” a vegetable is, the higher it is in antioxidants, so there is no easy way to make a smoothie that is very high in antioxidant, but also tastes amazing. To add even more to the downside, this smoothie is also a bit time-consuming to prepare and requires a bit of cleaning afterwords 🙁

3. The Stable Energy Smoothie – A Real Breakfast in a Cup

This smoothie is specifically designed to provide a very slow release of glucose and feed your brain. It is best used when you need your brain power – before an exam or job interview for example. This smoothie is relatively high in calories and it’s stable-energy release can be easily nullified by a fast-food or unhealthy meal. So, use only when needed! It’s also similar to the hunger-eliminating smoothie, but it’s a bit higher in carbs & fiber and lower in fat.

1/2 cup oats
An ounce of almonds
1 Banana
1 cup yogurt or milk

What? Is there a difference between the two? Absolutely – burning calories is simply well… burning calories. It does not automatically equal weight loss. If the calories that you are burning come from tissue fat – you will be losing weight. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Let’s look at caloric expenditure vs weight loss and do a quick calculation:
1000g of fat = 2,2 pounds = Roughly 9000 calories
This means that in order to lose 2 pounds of body fat, you would have to burn 9000 calories. For women, this is the typical caloric requirement for about 5 days. So, not eating anything for 5 days would burn you 2,2 pounds of fat. You can see why calorie-restriction diets fail. Not to mention that your metabolism would greatly slow down after 20+ hours of starvation, leading to even slower fat burn. After starving, your body will do its best to store any excess calorie you eat in order to prevent you from dying of starvation in the future. This is much more applicable to women, as we all know intermittent fasting does work well for men.
So, there you go – trying to ‘burn calories’ is not an effective weight loss strategy. On the other hand, manipulating your metabolism and hormonal environment, by simply tweaking your diet a bit can get you much faster fat loss. By limiting calories, you are trying to ‘force’ your body to resort to burning body fat. However, there is an easier way! How to enable your body to burn body fat is different for men and women and in this article we will focus on men.
Men benefit greatly from intermittent fasting – having an 8 hour (or less) eating window and not eating the rest of the day. This is because they lack the ‘rebound’ effect women suffer from when fasting – in other words, men can fast, burn some fat and then NOT put it back on when they start eating again.

When it comes to anti-aging and age reversal, there are two components – the way you feel and the way you look. It is an indisputable fact that the first component is easily affected by your diet, sleep, exercise and levels of stress. The second component however, has been a focus of many new products on the market. Let’s look at what causes aging in the first place, what are it’s signs and can it really be reversed:
DNA multiplication errors
This is the main reason why we age and why the rate of cancer increases exponentially with age. Since we don’t yet understand the mechanics behind this, we are still unable to influence it. Therefore, we can assume that correcting DNA multiplication errors is outside of our control for now.
Collagen synthesis & anti-oxidants
This is where the magic happens. The older we get, the harder it becomes for our skin to synthesize the elastic substances needed for it to be wrinkle-free. This is also connected to lower vitamin C levels. Many anti-aging products use a simple topical vitamin formula in order to replenish the vitamin stores of the skin cells and aid collagen synthesis. Surprisingly, this can work quite well and in a very short amount of time. When it comes to deep wrinkles however, it is still not clear how much we can reverse them, as they have already became a structural defect in the structure of the skin.
Slowing aging down
Slowing aging down is clearly possible. However, the most results often come from your diet and not from a topical cream you use. Smoking, drinking and sun exposure are all contributing factors to skin aging and eliminating them can greatly slow down aging. In addition to that, antioxidants can temporarily protect us from those ‘free radicals’. When it comes to skin aging, vitamin c and vitamin a are the most important anti-oxidants, as we know for a fact that they take part in collagen synthesis.