Are You Getting Bio-Available Curcumin That Your Body Understands

Curcumin is one of my favorite Chinese herbs. It is really a wonder drug, so great for a variety of afflictions not to mention the prevention of many afflictions. Known for it's spicy pungent flavor, curcumin (otherwise known as tumeric) can induce the flow of bile to break down fat, help our heart by reducing plaque in arteries, and has been used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years. In fact, curcumin is well known for its anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and cell protector abilities. I recommend it for cancer patients as curcumin has been shown to influence many cellular factors. (More on Curcumin and breast cancer here.) But, the most important consideration when buying herbal supplements such as curcumin is to make sure you are getting a high quality, bio-available herbal supplement. This means, a product your body recognizes and can break down easily and absorb. Sometimes fillers in the products can interfere with the bodies ability to absorb the herbal supplement, other times it can be a result of herbal processing. A recent study on curcumin suggests that curcumin is used and absorbed more readily when it is cooked in boiling water for a minimum of 10 minutes. The researchers found curcumin had a 12 fold solubility after cooking.

What I find interesting is that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, her! bs are a lways cooked in an aqueous solution, meaning boiled in water. After experimenting for hundreds of years, men and women did figure out somewhere along the line that eating a curcumin root raw was not as useful as drinking the water the root was boiled in. It's amazing what we have learned after centuries of trial and error. Our curcumin is always extracted in water through a controlled cooking process. Our granules are a highly concentrated extract of curcumin root with a minimum extract of 5:1. To read more our pharmaceutical grade curcumin here.

Want to read more articles on curcumin?

Tumeric for Osteoorthritis

Tumeric and Breast Cancer

  • Arthritis and Immunology Program, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

    • References

  • Dhillon N, Aggarwal BB, Newman RA, et al. Phase II trial of curcumin in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Clin Cancer Res 2008;14:44919
  • Lao CD, Ruffin MT IV, Normolle D, et al. Dose escalation of a curcuminoid formulation. BMC Complement Altern Med 2006;6:10
  • L, Aggarwal BB, Shishodia S, et al. Nuclear factor-B and IB kinase are constitutively active in human pancreatic cells, and their down-regulation by curcumin (diferuloylmethane) is associated with the suppression of proliferation and the inductio! n of apo ptosis. Cancer 2004;101:235162.
  • Kurien BT, Singh A, Matsumoto H, et al. Improving the solubility and pharmacological efficacy of curcumin by heat treatment. Assay Drug Dev Technol 2007;5:56776.
  • Kurien BT, Scofield RH. In vitro modification of solid phase multiple antigenic peptides/autoantigens with 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (HNE) provide ideal substrates for detection of anti-HNE antibodies and peptide antioxidants. J Immunol Methods 2005;303:667
  • Kurien BT, Scofield RH. Curcumin/turmeric solubilized in sodium hydroxide inhibits HNE protein modification-an in vitro study. J Ethnopharmacol 2007;110:36873.


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