Golden Milk

Hello Steemit community!!
I'm back talking about my favorite spice, that is not only a spice, it's a precious natural supplement, well used in Ayurvedic medicine.
I'm going to talk about turmeric! Maybe its colour can suggest how much precious it is: like GOLD!

Let's talk about one of the method to take Turmeric. You can just buy turmeric capsules, or make a self-made beverage.
Me, I love to do self-made preparations... maybe it's because I'm a chemist, who knows?
If you like too, I will explain how to prepare a useful and healthful turmeric drink: the GOLDEN MILK.

Normally, when starting taking a natural drug, it's better to do it every day for at least 20 days, depending on the type of drug and therapy.
When I started to prepare it, I read about some people preparing such a water-based paste, and store it in the fridge for about 3 weeks. This is because turmeric needs a little bit of "activation" (mixing and heating) and this process may help to better dissolve and absorb the active principle.
You can mix a quantity of turmeric with the double volume of water and heat. You have to mix while heating until it thickens and becomes a paste. When it cools down you can store it in the fridge in a glass or in a cup, covered to protect from light.

What about the quantity? Usually, you may consider one teaspoon each day, that is about 3-4 grams. So if you prepare it for 2 weeks it could be about 50 grams.

When I tried to store this paste, it became darker after 2 weeks and some mold formed. So I don't think it's very useful and not very time saving.

Normally when I want to take a golden milk, I prepare it extemporarly.
It's a golden milk, so first of all we need gold (turmeric, one teaspoon of the powder or the paste) and milk.
I've seen that vegetal milk is more used.. so I don't know if it's because "this kind of natural things" are usually prepared by vegan / macrobiotic / vegetarian people, or beacause a real benefit of using them. I think that animal milk it's also ok!

Turmeric needs at least heat, pepper and fat component to be well dissolved and adsorbed by our tissues.
It's because curcumin (the active principle of turmeric) is fat-soluble and it isn't very bioavailable without the help of piperine.
A 10% in weight of pepper ensure 2000% of curcumin bioavailability.

You also need an amount of fat, so you can use coconut or almonds oil. These are healtful and good taste compounds but I think they are expensive and not very available in our pantry. I'm my self Italian, so I normally use olive oil, even if it gives to the drink another particular taste that you have to get used to.

Prepare this magical drink heating slowly a cup of milk with a teaspoon of turmeric and a pinch of pepper, add a spoon of oil and mix until the desired temperature is reached and the milk becomes golden-colored.

Now, turmeric and pepper have a strong taste, so maybe you need to adjust the flavor. You can add honey and/or cinnamon.

This drink has mainly antiinflammatory properties, but it is also purifying and anticancer.
If you want to increase this healthful benefits you can add some ginger while heating.

Let's try and comment. See you!