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Growing up, I enjoyed spending time in my grandmother’s kitchen. Her cooking usually involved an array of colorful spices, including a generous mix of curry powder in nearly every Indian recipe. You can’t mistake the tantalizing smell—cooking with this yellow-tinted powder can fill a room quite quickly. But it appears that there is much more to the aromatic spice than first meets the nose. It may help maintain heart health, too.

Turmeric, one of the spices that make up curry powder, contains curcumin. Evidence suggests that consuming curcumin has a wide range of physiological effects that may be beneficial to health. Curcumin is rich in antioxidants and acts as an anti-inflammatory, which may help explain its ability to promote nitric oxide (NO) availability. NO is a key compound in maintaining the health of our blood vessels. Scientists think that the body makes less NO and more becomes inactive as we age. Consequently, there is less available as we get older.

Also as we age, our blood vessels aren’t able to expand (dilate) as well. They become stiffer and less flexible and more likely to become clogged. Older people have a greater risk for developing high blood pressure due to the increased stiffness and reduced flexibility of the blood vessels. This process is called vascular aging. Women appear to experience vascular aging more quickly after menopause when the hormone estrogen is no longer produced.

A study of healthy middle-aged and older women in Japan found that taking curcumin supplements for eight weeks improved the blood vessels’ ability to dilate and reduced stiffening of the carotid artery in the neck. A recent study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that exercise training alone does not protect against blood vessel stiffening in postmenopausal women. Therefore, combining exercise training with curcumin may be a promising way for women to slow down the steep decline in vascular health after menopause.

Another study of healthy middle-aged and older adults found that 12 weeks of curcumin supplementation improved NO availability and reduced oxidative stress (a type of cell damage) to improve blood vessel function.

These studies show promise for curcumin as a preventive therapy to lower heart disease risk in both men and women.

It seems that this golden spice really is a spice for life and may help prevent cardiovascular disease—the leading cause of death in the United States and worldwide—in older people.

March is National Nutrition Month. Learn more about how eating a balanced diet can improve your health at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics website.

Yasina Somani, MS, is a PhD student in the Cardiovascular Aging and Exercise Lab at Penn State. She is interested in studying the effects of novel exercise and nutritional therapies on cardiovascular outcomes in both healthy and clinical populations.