Haridra

TRADITIONAL VIEW, WITH SAFETY LIMITS

Hindi name: Haldi

What the texts say Haridra does

• Varnya — improves complexion
• Lekhana — scraping, reduces excess tissue and fat
• Krimighna — anthelmintic (against worms)
• Kandughna — relieves itching
• Vishaghna — antidote (against poison)
• Shothahara — reduces swelling

What the evidence says. Not established for any health purpose.

Side effects and limits

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Acid reflux
• Stomach upset
• Diarrhoea
• Constipation

Avoid or ask first: Pregnancy — supplement amounts are considered unsafe. This is about supplements, not about turmeric used in cooking.; Existing liver disease — discuss with a doctor before any supplement, given the reported liver injury.

A traditional classification, not a recommendation. The full safety record is below.

AS THE CLASSICAL TEXTS AND THE API PRESCRIBE

API assay: curcuminoids not less than 3.0 per cent. Taken with dugdha for shotha, with madhu for kapha.

Reported from Sharangadhara Samhita and the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India. Laisha states what the texts prescribe; it does not recommend. No quantity here is adjusted for a particular person — not for agni, koshtha, bala, age, pregnancy, kidney or liver function, or anything already being taken.

Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India, Part I

A curcuminoid content below the limit, with a bright colour, is the signature of lead chromate adulteration — the colour comes from the pigment and not from the rhizome.

These are the pharmacopoeial limits for the article, not a test Laisha has run on anything. They are here so a practitioner can ask a supplier for a certificate of analysis and know what the numbers on it should say.

Tikta and katu, with no madhura at all — the contrast usually drawn with its own relative, amba haridra.

These are the actions the classical texts record. They are statements about what the tradition holds, and this library does not restate them as findings about a human body.

Nisha and Rajani both mean night, and the texts read the name as describing what the dye does to whatever it touches. Varavarnini means one that gives a fine complexion.

Rasa, guna, virya, vipaka and karma are recorded as the classical texts give them, with the text and section named so a student can open the book and check. Where an exact chapter and verse could not be confirmed, this library names the section rather than inventing a number.

Powdered turmeric is among the most adulterated articles in the Indian market, and the adulterants are the dangerous kind: lead chromate has been repeatedly documented as a colour enhancer, along with metanil yellow and chalk. This is not a substitution of one plant for another but the addition of a heavy metal to a food, and it is the single strongest argument in this library for buying a rhizome whole and grinding it yourself.

Matched to the accepted name in the GBIF backbone at 99% confidence. Zingiberaceae is the ginger family, and turmeric is a close relative of ginger — which is why the two are grown, harvested and cured in almost the same way.

A WAY TO REMEMBER IT

Curcuma is from Arabic kurkum, which meant saffron — anything that dyed yellow. Longa is long, for the mother rhizome. Hari-dra: the one that carries yellow.

Turmeric has a long history in Ayurveda, where haridra is used both internally and applied to the skin, and it remains a daily kitchen spice across South Asia. That is what the tradition holds and what the kitchen does; neither is a finding about what the plant does in a body.

Constituents. Curcumin, a major component of turmeric, gives the spice its yellow colour. The compounds credited with its properties are the curcuminoids, of which curcumin is one.

Grown as a crop: how to grow turmeric, from sowing to harvest, in Laisha's grow guides.

• No dose is given, here or anywhere in this library.
• Nothing here is a recommendation to take turmeric as a supplement, or to stop taking anything prescribed.
• Where a warning applies to concentrated supplements rather than to cooking, it says so — because collapsing that distinction would either frighten people away from a spice or reassure them about a capsule.