Comments on Turmeric and Curcumin

18DEC12 - I have recently found some Curcumin Tablets that include Peperine, the active ingredient of Black Pepper.  I did know that it was necessary to mix black pepper with turmeric to extract the Curcumin, I have since found that it is also necessary to include black pepper or peperine with the curcumin to help it to be absorbed by the body.  The process of preparing this item is very tedious and time consuming.  I have recently discovered that when clinical trials of curcumin have been carried out they have used curcumin tablets.  I have also found one trials unit that used tablets supplied by Ageless Cures of USA.  Their tablets are called SuperCurcumin and contain Peperine.  These tablets are a reasonable price and have a delivery time of about ten days from USA to Australia.  Here is a link to their website.  It is certainly a much easier way to get Curcumin into the body, I take four tablets per day.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Soon after the my treatment for NSCLC began I decided to research my diet.  I had been told of some foods to avoid and of a few that could be beneficial, there was nothing formal about this and different medical people would have variations in their lists.  The answers that I found are detailed in my page DIET TO COMPLEMENT TREATMENT.  Several books were recommended to me and I found a dietary supplement in Anti cancer a new way of life by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD very interesting.  This supplement was a drink made up of liquidised fruit and vegetables with a large helping of Turmeric.  The preparation of the supplement was quite consuming but did seem to be worth the effort.  After the first 120 day CT Scan there was no noticeable effects from this supplement but after a further 120 days there was a slight decrease in the size of the tumour, this could have been attributed to either the Tarceva tablets, the supplement or a combination of both.  During 2011 we had some travel planned meaning that the preparation of the supplement would be very difficult.  As a test I decided to suspend the supplement for one of the 120 day periods.  The next CT Scan showed that the tumour had increased in size by 14% so I very quickly went back to using the supplement.  During 2011 we had 38 days on cruise liners, the type of food that they served may have contributed to my downturn; they all claimed that they cooked everything in virgin olive oil but it did not taste like that to us. I have since had another CT Scan and the tumour size is holding steady, I’m hoping for a decrease at the next 120 day point.

 

It is well known that statistically areas of the world where soy products or turmeric are prominent features in the local diets have low rates of cancer compared to the world averages.  In Okinawa where both items are prominent in the diet they seem to have the lowest rates of cancer in the world, this is where it is claimed that centenarians are common and many reach the age of 110 or more.  The few cases of cancer in Okinawa are mainly stomach related, this may be caused by smoked fish included in their diet.  The number of cancer cases in Okinawa is on the increase because the younger people have been exposed to fast food.  Soy products already feature prominently in my vegetarian diet so I decided to increase the amount of turmeric that I consume, David Servan-Schreiber’s supplement was the easiest way to do this.  Since then I have modified my supplement to a soup that contains large quantities of turmeric.

 

The beneficial active ingredient in Turmeric is Curcumin, a problem here is that it is very difficult for the body to absorb it.  One thing that does help is to add ground black pepper to the turmeric in the ratio of 1 of pepper to 4 of turmeric.  These powders should be mixed well together then soaked for a couple of hours in oil, they do not seem to dissolve but the books assure me that this is the best way to process them.

 

There is also another trick with Curcumin.  Some health food companies produce Curcumin tablets; they claim that their Curcumin extract is in a form that can easily be absorbed by the body.  These tablets are fairly expensive but are certainly a very convenient way of taking Curcumin.  Dosage is another problem, not a lot of work has been done in this area but a few reports have suggested that very high doses do no harm other than a slight yellowing of the skin.  A reasonable daily dose seems to be about 6,000mG (6gms), of Curcumin daily or about ten grams of turmeric plus black pepper daily.  I intend to take both of these supplements each day and hopefully I can report on the results towards the end of August 2012.

 

There have been a number of clinical trials with Curcumin on many types of cancer, the conclusions generally are that it appears to be beneficial and certainly further investigation is needed.  The further investigation will involve spending lots of money and they are unlikely to get much co-operation from the clinical trials units who gain most of their income from pharmaceutical testing.

 

The curcumin trials cover many types of cancer, they seem to have chosen the ones where pathology samples can be easily taken.  I’ll give a few links below:

 

St George Hospital, Sydney – multiple trials with many types of cancer.

University Hospitals of Leicester, UK – Adenocarcinoma & others.

Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas Texas – Basic Science.

US National Library of Medicine – Basic Science with useful links on RHS.

Oregon State University, USA – Basic Science, much information and links on curcumin.

University of Taiwan – Research into several mutations of EGFR and the results with various NSCLC tumours.  This is a PLOS article.