Curry, Turmeric, & Curcumin….

Today's Post: Friday, 7-17-2009

People in India who eat a lot of curry and curried foods tend to not get Alzheimer’s disease or cancer.

From that information, the turmeric spice that is in almost all curries and colors them yellow looks to be protective against Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.

And, curcumin is thought to be the major component of turmeric that has these effects.

There are two pieces of good news.

1. You can buy turmeric or curcumin supplements at most health food and supplement stores

2. The follow up studies are quite clear. Not only does turmeric prevent Alzheimer’s disease and many kinds of cancer, it apparently does so in multiple ways in each case.

It may also slow aging, help prevent cardiovascular disease, and prevent MS.

Turmeric definitely helps with some kinds of stomach upset.

It also works as an anti-inflammatory agent. And turmeric is an antioxidant.

So, curry as a food component is a superfood. (It adds a LOT of flavor with no added salt needed also.)

And, turmeric or curcumin as a supplement is a super supplement.

1. I began taking turmeric because the evidence I saw for preventing Alzheimer’s disease looked convincing to me and because Alzheimer’s disease is a condition I want to completely avoid if I can.

The follow up research more recently is extremely good and promising.

In Alzheimer’s disease prevention, the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects of turmeric tend to prevent nerve damage in the first place. Turmeric, along with exercise, seems to cause the growth of new nerve and brain cells. And, either directly or by empowering your immune system or both, turmeric both prevents amyloid build up in the brain, & it will remove amyloid build up that has already occurred .

In addition, turmeric’s effects in preventing oxidation of your blood lipids and preventing high levels of inflammation tend to prevent cardiovascular disease and keep your circulation good. And since damaged circulation tends to cause both Alzheimer’s disease and age related mental decline, turmeric also is of some help in preventing Alzheimer’s disease in that way.

Turmeric may not be able to reverse severe Alzheimer’s disease that has already destroyed a lot of brain cells or prevent senility caused by other factors such as lead or mercury poisoning.

But if you want to avoid Alzheimer’s disease completely or prevent early stage Alzheimer’s disease from progressing, it may be quite effective.

It also looks like many of these same effects do help turmeric to prevent or slow the progression of MS.

2. The follow up research more recently is extremely good and promising that turmeric prevents many kinds of cancers well and all kinds to some extent.

It was in the online health news recently that turmeric definitely helps prevent a common kind of breast cancer.

Because of turmeric’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects it tends to prevent the damage to the DNA in your cells that causes cancer.

And, whether by those two effects alone or with others, turmeric has been found to lower the level of the mutagens, or DNA damaging chemicals, in your body.

So, less cancers ever start in the first place.

In some studies, curcumin has been found to hinder the growth of abnormal cells.

It apparently interferes with their growth directly and may have similar effects on HIV viruses and other viruses as well as cancer cells.

And, with cancer cells and as part of its inflammation fighting ability, turmeric also tends to suppress the development of new blood vessels to feed cancer cells or to cause or complicate inflammation. (Turmeric may even do this only for abnormal conditions, unlike the drugs that inhibit blood vessel formation that also inhibit it for muscles that get extra use or for your heart developing extra circulation if its initial supply blood vessels become partially or completely blocked.)

So, cancer cells that form are less likely to keep growing.

In conclusion, I’m so glad I’ve been taking turmeric supplements for quite a while now & started to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

It looks like it HAS added to the list of things I do to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

And, it looks like it has also been helping to prevent heart disease, MS, and most cancers too even though I was unaware of it before.

Lastly, although turmeric is NOT my favorite flavor in curry mixes, I’ve managed to eat curried foods more often and add curry spices to my food more often.

And, although there are some supplements I’ve temporarily discontinued and some I may wait a bit to refill to save money at times, turmeric is now on my list of supplements I will not willingly run out of or discontinue.

Curcumin may eliminate Alzheimer’s directly….

Today's Post: Tuesday, 6-9-2009

The original observation was that in India where most people were eating curried foods often, Alzheimer’s disease was rare or at least very much less frequent than in other places. In fact, some of these population studies found that people who only ate curried foods two or three times a week were less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease.

And, in curry, the most common ingredient is the spice turmeric with its distinctive yellow color that contains the active ingredient curcumin.

On this basis many people began taking curcumin or turmeric supplements. When I read that there might well be something to this I began doing so myself.

Last Saturday I got the periodic health news email that the NewsMax people send out that always has 4 or 5 of the current health news stories that their editorial staff thinks important or that they think might be of interest to readers.

The lead story on Saturday, 6-6-2009 was entitled, “Spice of Life Might Help Prevent Alzheimer’s.”

But the story was actually a good bit more exciting. It seems researchers have found evidence that curcumin not only does prevent Alzheimer’s disease, it also was able to remove its cause after it had developed.

The only maybe about it is that they tested this to be so in mice. Not every finding in mice or other nonhuman lab animals tests out as true for humans. But the combination of this new research and the population studies make it look close to certain that it does.

That means that in addition to doing the things that are known to keep your brain active and well supplied with good circulation such as avoiding type 2 diabetes, regular exercise, regular socializing, and learning new things, people can also take a daily curcumin supplement and also avoid Alzheimer’s disease.

And, it makes it look likely that early stage Alzheimer’s disease might be reversed by taking curcumin -- although the amount might be greater than required for prevention.

The apparent cause of Alzheimer’s disease is the damage to brain neurons from a build up of amyloid plaques. These amyloid plaques prevent communication between neurons so they become useless or kill the neurons or both.

It seems that at researchers at Duke in the Duke University Medical Center used some mice that had been genetically modified to reliably develop these plaques.

But when they fed curcumin to these genetically vulnerable mice from a young age, virtually no plaques developed. But even more exciting was when they fed high doses of curcumin to other mice that had already developed these amyloid plaques, the plaques gradually disappeared.

In addition, to be sure these findings work in people, the story reported that a human clinical trial is now being done in California.

The other reason to take curcumin or eat curried foods containing it is that the incidence of all cancers is also lower in India than elsewhere.

This may be due to different environmental factors such as what has been much lower use of herbicides and pesticides in India. But the NewsMax article ending by saying that turmeric and curcumin are also being studied to see if they also help prevent cancer as well as Alzheimer’s disease.

And, it added something I had not yet heard, that turmeric and curcumin are also being studied to see if they might help prevent arthritis.

Cut your chance of getting cancer 10 to 1....

Today's post: Thursday, 7-31-2008

“The incidence of the top four cancers in the U.S. - colon, breast, prostate, and lung - is ten times lower in India.”

Research has now been done to explain why. There is evidence that taking one specific supplement can give you the same protection the people in India get.

(Note that this is on top of the many other actions, such as staying away from tobacco smoke, and getting the several other supplements and foods that protect you from getting cancer.

We’ve posted for example on taking boron, selenium, vitamin D, & resveratrol all of which, in addition to other health benefits, tend to prevent cancer. Eating raw broccoli & or cauliflower and other cruciferous vegetables, particularly if they are organically grown is also protective.)

People in India eat a lot of curried foods. Curries vary in their ingredients; but they all seem to contain the spice, turmeric, a member of the ginger family of spices. This produces a sharpness or heat to the food and imparts an intense yellow color.

A study published in the August 15, 2005 issue of the journal Cancer, found that curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, stopped laboratory strains of melanoma from proliferating and caused the cancer cells to commit suicide.

Since melanoma is one of the most dangerous and hard to kill cancers, I believe this is extremely significant news.

The research found that curcumin shut down nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB), a powerful protein that causes strong inflammatory responses that tend to cause cancer, arthritis, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

In fact, this effect may explain why curcumin seems to prevent Alzheimer’s disease as strongly as it prevents cancers.

Daily capsules of curcumin powder may also strongly slow growth of pancreatic cancer and multiple myeloma according to the authors of the study.

One of them also said that:: "The incidence of the top four cancers in the U.S. - colon, breast, prostate, and lung - is ten times lower in India,"

Curcumin made desirable changes in virtually every tumor biomarker they tested.

They found that curcumin down-regulates EGFR activity that mediates tumor cell proliferation, and the VEGF helps create in angiogenesis.

That means that curcumin tends to prevent cancers from growing and from getting increased access to blood supply. And, that means the cancer cells tend to stop growing and become starved for energy and oxygen.

They also found that curcumin reduces NF-kB and IKK the protein that turns NF-kB 0n& suppresses a STAT3 pathway that is also involved in tumorigenesis two. Both these pathways play a central role in cell survival and proliferation

One researcher said that curcumin’s ability to suppress numerous biological routes to cancer development is helped explain why it was effective. This helps to ensure “aptosis’ or death of the cancer cells.

They also found that. "The NF-kB machinery is suppressed by both short exposures to high concentrations of curcumin as well as by longer exposure to lower concentrations of curcumin,"

That suggests that if you take curcumin regularly as a supplement for quite some time, it will give you quite robust protection against getting cancer since with far less inflammation less cancers will start and any that develop will tend to die off instead of taking hold and growing.

It also suggests, that unlike some drugs and supplements where more is NOT better or is even dangerous -- such as taking more than 100 mg a day of vitamin B6 or far more than 10,000 iu of the retinol form of vitamin A-- if you have cancer, taking very large doses of curcumin may prove to be an effective treatment. The researchers found the desirable effects for both ways of taking the curcumin.

On a personal note, I’ve taken one capsule a day of curcumin for quite awhile for its ability to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

The news that it also may have that strong of a preventive effect on prostate cancer for which I have a family history, AND colon and lung cancer is very welcome news.

I also am pleased that it looks likely to prevent breast cancer. And, it looks likely to prevent or even be a decent supplementary treatment for many other cancers.

I also forwarded the information on this study to my nephew who didn’t have a nasty looking mole on his leg checked out early and who is now being treated for stage III melanoma as a result.

It sounds like he would do well to take 3 capsules 3 times a day of curcumin for a month and then 3 a day after that. I read a report of the study instead of the study itself. If you can get a copy of the study, the study may show what amount of curcumin the authors tested as a “very large” dose and for how long they gave it to get the effects they found.

By the way, people who often eat curried food also get plenty of curcumin. If you have access to such foods several times a week and enjoy them, that may also work as the very low rate of these cancers in India suggests.

Protect Your Brain with curry, turmeric, or Curcumin….

Today's post: Friday, 7-20-2007

It’s been known for quite a while that people who live in India & eat foods spiced with curry rarely to never get Alzheimer’s disease.

Further, many health writers have suggested that it’s the yellow turmeric spice in curry powder that creates this effect. Others have said that it’s the Curcumin in turmeric that does this.

Two studies seem to not only confirm this but show that one of the key ways turmeric does this is by helping make sure your body cleans out the amyloid in your brain before it forms into the destructive plaques that kill your brain neurons.

The more recently released study suggests that a drug using the most effective Curcumin component may even eventually be effective in partially or completely reversing Alzheimers, particularly if it’s used at an early stage.

The good news is that many people like eating curried foods. And, turmeric & Curcumin supplements are available now in health food & supplement stores.

We’ll end this post with some other ways to keep your brain young. They also work.

But here are the two study reports first.:

I found this in the online health news on Yahoo on Monday this week, 7-16-2007.

(From their main page, click on news & then scroll down to the health section to see health news on Yahoo.)This study shows why taking turmeric or curcumin really might help prevent Alzheimer's disease & why it works, at least in part.

(Since these supplements also are antioxidants; act to ensure good blood flow; & have anti-inflammatory effects, they probably also help prevent the damage in the first place. So there may be more to it than just the effect found in this study.)

(Posted Monday, 7-16-2007)

"NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - If laboratory findings hold true in people, treatment with one of the active chemicals in turmeric, the main spice found (in) curry, may boost the immune system of patients with Alzheimer's disease and, thereby, increase the clearance of amyloid plaques in the brain, the primary abnormality seen in patients with the disease, researchers in the United States report.

In their study, Dr. Milan Fiala, from the Greater Los Angeles Veteran's Affairs Medical Center, and colleagues first show that immune cells called macrophages taken from patients with Alzheimer's disease cannot efficiently eliminate amyloid and that this may be related to the abnormal regulation of certain genes.

Treating these cells with an active substance found in turmeric, called bisdemethoxycurcumin, increases the production of some of the genes and enhances macrophage function, according to the team's report, published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors note that other Alzheimer's disease treatment strategies have attempted to increase the clearance of amyloid by stimulating the activity of certain cells located in the brain.

By contrast, the current approach boosts amyloid clearance by enhancing the activity of macrophage cells derived from bone marrow.Further studies are needed to determine if increasing blood levels of macrophages using an oral curcumin agent clear the amyloid plaques, and produce therapeutic effects, in patients with Alzheimer's disease, they add.

SOURCE: Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, July 16, 2007."

The study I saw reported earlier was very similar:

“From the Health Science Institute newsletter on 10-18-2006

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could set loose inside your body a microscopic cleaning crew that would hunt down and remove harmful microorganisms and waste products?

Actually, that crew already exists, working hard every hour to keep you healthy. It's a force made up of cells called macrophages that have the capacity to attach to connective tissue or travel throughout the blood stream where they overwhelm microorganisms that can do you harm. And while macrophages are very effective at what they do, sometimes they need a little help.

Researchers at UCLA have produced evidence that a common spice might be just the help that microphages need to protect the brain from Alzheimer's disease.

…. there's growing evidence that curcumin may … be an effective amyloid plaque inhibitor.

Curcumin is a yellow pigment in the root of turmeric. Curry gets its distinctive color and flavor from curcumin. But in addition to its culinary appeal, curcumin is a natural antioxidant and inflammatory that has been used by Indian Ayurvedic healers for thousands of years to treat indigestion, arthritis, and urinary tract disorders.

In …. a UCLA study in which aging mice with advanced amyloid accumulation in the brain were injected with curcumin. Results showed that curcumin was able to cross the blood-brain barrier and bind to beta amyloid, which helped block amyloid plaque aggregation.

In the September 2006 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, another UCLA team reported on a study that tested the effects of curcumin on AD.

STUDY ABSTRACT
Researchers took macrophage samples from six AD patients and three healthy control subjects

When macrophage samples were tested for their ability to bind with amyloid, uptake efficiency was found to be significantly lower in the AD samples, compared to the control samples

Macrophage samples were then exposed to curcumin for 24 hours

Amyloid uptake efficiency was significantly increased in half of the AD macrophage samples treated with curcumin

Curcumin was more effective in macrophage samples taken from patients with early-stage AD

Curcumin had no effect on macrophage samples from healthy subjects

…., the UCLA Alzheimer's Disease Research Center has begun a clinical trial with human subjects to study the effect of curcumin supplements in AD patients.

Alzheimer's rates in India (where curcumin is widely consumed in curry dishes) are among the lowest in the world. But for most of us here in the west it's not really practical to sharply increase our dietary intake of curry.

Curcumin supplements can be found in health food stores and through many Internet sources.

But curcumin users should be aware of these precautions:

Indigestion is one of the conditions curcumin is used to address, but large doses may cause ulcers in some patients.

Curcumin has been shown to lower cholesterol by prompting the liver to discharge bile, but this can be a problem for anyone with an obstruction of the biliary tract

Curcumin thins the blood, so it should not be taken with anti-coagulants or anti-inflammatory drugs. “

Of course if you have too much oxidized LDL or cholesterol plaques in your blood vessels, the circulation to the neurons in your brain may be harmed. So for most people these last two effects are not only desirable; but also show how turmeric or Curcumin helps prevent Alzheimer’s & age related mental decline in the first place.

In fact, all the practices that protect your heart &/or keep your blood vessels healthy & responsive & keep your blood pressure in the normal range also prevent strokes that can gravely harm your brain & ensure your brain gets enough oxygen and energy & has enough blood flow to clear CO2 & other waste products.

Exercise helps do all these things. Even better, recent studies show exercise causes your body to grow new brain neurons – even in elderly people.

Mental exercise from regular socializing, learning new things, & doing mental activities like cross word puzzles or solving chess problems or playing strategic games like bridge, or simply following subjects you are interested in also grow new neurons & maintain old ones & their interconnections.

At the University of California at Berkeley it was discovered that “enriched environments” in younger mammals & people caused the growth or new neurons & helped form new interconnections. More recently, they found that this process continues to work in even elderly people.

Recently, in our area a 100 year old woman died. And, she was apparently mentally sharp & lived independently virtually the whole 100 years.

Other than taking Curcumin supplements, she did all of the above. She regularly kept up a ONE ACRE garden by herself for exercise; she was an avid fan of the local football teams, the San Francisco 49ers; & the Stanford football team; she played competitive bridge regularly; she was active in her extended family; & an officer in a local social group. She even found time to enjoy & play music.

Her personal focus was to stay optimistic & happy -- & to keep busy. So by keeping very busy with the things she really liked to do, she did.

Your list of activities you like & the kind of exercises you do, will likely be far different.

But, you’ll be happier & live far longer & stay mentally sharp if you follow her example.