#1

Bharat B. Aggarwal is an Indian-American biochemist who worked at MD Anderson Cancer Center from 1989 to 2015. His research focused on potential anti-cancer effects and therapeutic applications of herbs and spices. Aggarwal was particularly drawn to curcumin, a non-toxic compound found in turmeric that has long been staple in Ayurvedic systems of medicine. …

MD Anderson Cancer Center initially appeared to be fully on board with Aggarwal’s work. At one point, their website’s FAQ page recommended visitors buy curcumin wholesale from a company for which Aggarwal was a paid speaker (see “Spice Healer”, Scientific American). However, in 2012 (following observations of image manipulation raised by pseudonymous sleuth Juuichi Jigen), MD Anderson Cancer Center launched a research fraud probe against Aggarwal which eventually led to 30 of Aggarwal’s articles being retracted. Only some of these studies were about curcumin specifically, but most concerned similar natural products.

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What are the best meta-study papers/threads that critique pre-existing studies for quality? ["peer review failures"/skepticism]
#2

Well, that took a long time to become big news. Curcumin is having a bad time lately. That was the supplement I paid to have tested by Ora Biomedical. I don’t take curcumin but I eat tumeric spice most days.

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#3

I also eat fresh turmeric root with my whole grains, add it buckwheat, millet, barley together with garlic and fresh greens.

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#4

I was wanting to see that result as well! (Curcumin)

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#5

AIUI Curcumin is an (pan) HDAC inhibitor with low bioavailability. The facts cited in the article dont superficially seems to change that.

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#6

See video of Michael Greger MD below:

Now, they wanted to establish a baseline in the arsenic-exposed groups. So, they waited for three months to start the study. And, indeed, the DNA damage remained stable. Then, for three months, they proceeded to give them the curcumin or the placebo. The placebo didn’t do much, but within the first month, you could see the curcumin working. And, by the third month, the DNA damage in the curcumin-treated arsenic group was no worse than in those who hadn’t been exposed to arsenic at all.

And that’s amazing. The “curcumin had an effective role in [the] regression of DNA damage.” Yes, it’s “an excellent antioxidant agent,” but what they found subsequently is that the curcumin undid the arsenic crippling of our DNA repair enzymes. So, it both helped prevent the damage and facilitate repair. “Thus, curcumin…may be a useful modality for the prevention of arsenic-induced [cancer development].”

Same content below, at 4:54

from Jia-Yia Liu, MD | Loma Linda University

Pretty long video, but informative. I listened to it while encapsulating taurine powder in empty capsules.

The website below claims its turmeric is not lead contaminated.

#7

I’m suspicious of the efficacy of curcumin (the average Indian diet has about 2.5 grams of turmeric, yet Indians don’t live significantly longer or are a lot healthier than other peoples), and this claim about the “King of Curcmin” makes me even more suspicious – but, the Physionic guy seems semi-impressed by some of its potential effects on helping pre-diabetic people. He has mentioned in different videos about the need to take piperine with turmeric to increase the bioavailability.

There are maybe other ways to increase bioavailability. e.g. here’s a “letter to the editor” paper that mentions another method:

We have shown that we could increase the solubility of curcumin 12-fold by heating a solution of curcumin in water to boiling for 10 minutes.

Maybe combining this with piperine magnifies the effect further.

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#8

Taking it with piperine does multiply the effect. I do take curcumin myself, but:

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#9

Hmm… I would guess that many Indian curry dishes have at least maybe 500 mg to 1 gram or more of turmeric, depending on the portion size; and some people who eat a big meal may even consume much more than that at once. And then some subset of those dishes either also contain black pepper (containing about 35 mg of piperine per 1/4 teaspoon) as an ingredient or else people pepper it to add more flavor. So, if that amount of turmeric with, say, 35 mg of piperine is dangerous to the liver, one would expect to see a lot of people that eat Indian food have liver damage.