Turmeric's Health Benefits: Fact or Fiction?

It does contain some really good anti-inflammatory nutrients for sure.

Turmeric is a plant that we do use for cooking purposes. Indian cuisine makes use of it in many of those delicious curries that their chefs are able to spin out. Its root (the rhizome) makes it look somewhat similar to the ginger root, and as such, they are classified within the same plant family.

Within this turmeric rhizome lies a compound known as curcumin. Curcumin is an anti-inflammatory compound that can regulate the inflammatory signalling pathways that our cells use, namely the nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) pathway.

As such, curcumin is considered to have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties, but at the same time it has never been promoted as the ultimate cure for cancer.

Curcumin also provides the yellow colour that we see in many of those Indian dishes.

When we do introduce curcumin directly to the cells in Petri dishes, we can observe that happening — the NF-κB transcription activity is indeed inhibited.

However, curcumin has to get from our digestive system into our cells, and there’s an additional layer of difficulty there.

While we may see the effect that curcumin has when it is directly introduced to a cell, can we extend those observations to the curcumin that we do ingest from our food?

The answer is, of course, obviously, no.

The curcumin that works so well with regulating NF-κB when directly applied to the cell in a petri dish does need to traverse the digestive juices and enzymes in our stomach as well as pass through our intestines before it gets absorbed into our blood.

And, according to this article:

Curcumin has been confirmed to exhibit very poor bioavailability, with many studies showing very low, or even undetectable, concentrations in blood and extraintestinal tissue. Major reasons postulated are due to its poor absorption, rapid metabolism, chemical instability, and rapid systemic elimination.

So the problem is that our bodies won’t absorb the curcumin that we consume from natural turmeric that readily.

However, it is common to see how the health benefits associated with curcumin can be played up to market products that don’t provide much impact to that health benefit.

For example, some cafes and coffee houses do have turmeric lattes on their menu. We’d have to consider:

1. How much more do they cost in comparison with the regular lattes?

2. How much curcumin do we actually take in from that turmeric given its poor bioavailability?

What about curcumin supplements that aren’t necessarily manufactured for bioavailability?

Can I even tell if the curcumin supplement does contain what its label states that it contains, for instance?

There are definitely lots of questions about such products, and it is important to sieve out the contenders from the pretenders, especially for consumers who are actually looking for some form of pain relief or anti-inflammatory benefits when they consume curcumin.

Because from the manufacturer’s perspective, I could just put in X amount of curcumin into a tablet or into a turmeric latte mix. It’s not a necessity for me to confirm and verify that the human body is actually able to make use of that curcumin - a bigger pressing issue for the manufacturer would be food safety. Anyone suffering ill effects from products that were not safely prepared by me would open up quite a few cans of worms.

But of course, that’s the problem with “natural”, unmodified turmeric.

There are curcumin products that have been modified and tested on different patients, such as the Meriva® variant. Its enhanced bioavailability was shown to reduce the inflammation being experienced by people experiencing joint pain. Such scientific research will contribute to price increases of the overall products, but those products will be better understood and better engineered for the desired health benefits.

It is, therefore, necessary for us to understand that whatever nutrition that appears to be useful when directly applied to cells may not necessarily be effective in the cells of a human body, especially when it has to traverse the gauntlet that is our digestive system.

If you are experiencing some form of osteoarthritis or joint pain, do feel free to have a look at 10 Nutrients That Support Healthy Joint Function too!

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