63 replies to this topic

[A941]

Are there interesting news about Curcumin and Multiple sclerosis?

[graatch]

An intriguing mix of science and pop-yoga lingo.

They know their market.

Edited by graatch, 06 October 2008 - 12:39 AM.

[Mia K.]

An intriguing mix of science and pop-yoga lingo.

They know their market.

graatch, I'm quite sure you don't intend this as an insult, right? Good.

Briefly OT to A941: I'm not aware of anything new w/rt turmeric and MS, but are you aware of Dr. Bernard Bihari's work with low-dose naltrexone? A google search of ldn should provide quite a few useful hits.

Best, M.

[HighDesertWizard]

Among the most important things to remember about Curcumin is that it is a 5-Lipoxygenase pathway inhibitor (like Boswellia, Quercetin, Pycnogenol, etc.).

Notice that the disease specific benefits of Curcumin curiously resemble the benefits of Boswellia. Why is that?

I think it's because of the inhibition of 5-LO.

[NDM]

The first post suggested taking curcumin with ethanol extract. What would be wrong about taking both curcumin and resveratrol with a glass of wine or beer? (as a tastier source of ethanol ) (I got today NOW curcumin 95% extract and NOW resveratrol 50% + I don't shy away from alcohol)

[waldemar]

NDM, try creating a cocktail or something. Way to get this stuff out to the masses. :-)

1 shot vodka
2 shots martini (ideally bianco)
0.5 shot tween 80
250 mg curcumin
5 mg piperine
500 mg t-resv, 99%


Shaked, not stirred!

[david ellis]

2: Disolve in oil Curcumin is fully soluable in oil. Ideally we would want the smallest particles possible. Perhaps someone is more familiar with the mechanics of how something like curcumin would be 'disolved' in an oil. I'm not sure if it would disolve in a similiar manner as it would in ethanol, or whether a lipid emulsion would form where lipid droplets form around the drug. Either way, disolving in oil is a good way to go, however reducing particle size before hand may be important. This is probably the most practical method if you are going to put curcumin in a food dish.

The big problem with curcumin is its resemblance to a paint pigment. Mixing it in oil can be a mess. I mix one capsule in a tablespoon with a table setting teaspoon of coconut oil. Getting it down the gullet without getting yellow smears all over is tricky and requires care. I keep a bottle of alcohol handy to do cleanup.

[waldemar]

At least it gives the cocktail a nice color. jk.

Why don't we put the stuff into capsules, and before closing the caps add one drop of some oil that doesn't go bad fast? Then it would only be a mess once a month or so. The curcumin would also have time to dissolve.

[pycnogenol]

At least it gives the cocktail a nice color. jk.

Why don't we put the stuff into capsules, and before closing the caps add one drop of some oil that doesn't go bad fast? Then it would only be a mess once a month or so. The curcumin would also have time to dissolve.

Yeah, just don't forget to put in a small amount of BHT before closing the caps!

[waldemar]

What about freezing the caps after the oil has been added? Then only the surface of the oil-ice-crystal (probably <1%) can oxidize.... :-)

[FunkOdyssey]

For efficiency and bulk processing: Take a known quantity of coconut oil (typical jar with 100 teaspoons or tablespoons, whatever), raise temp to change oil from solid -> liquid, mix in and dissolve 100 caps of curcumin, allow to reharden? Or would this expel the dissolved curcumin when it rehardens? Maybe you could do the same thing with an oil that is mostly saturated (resists oxidation) but stays liquid at room temperature. MCT Oil then.

Workable?

[Lufega]

Dissolve the curcumin in warm coconut milk. I got that from a multiple myeloma blog. The writer did a good job researching almost every aspect of curcurmin. Good read.

http://margaret.heal...ty-of-curcumin/

[david ellis]

For efficiency and bulk processing: Take a known quantity of coconut oil (typical jar with 100 teaspoons or tablespoons, whatever), raise temp to change oil from solid -> liquid, mix in and dissolve 100 caps of curcumin, allow to reharden? Or would this expel the dissolved curcumin when it rehardens? Maybe you could do the same thing with an oil that is mostly saturated (resists oxidation) but stays liquid at room temperature. MCT Oil then.
Workable?

I think it would work well. Curcumin melts easily into coconut oil. Then pour the oil onto a cookie sheet. Let the oil harden, then score the hardened oil into say, squares containing 500 mg of curcumin. Then wrap the squares with wax paper or saran wrap. Keep in refrigerator. Swallow hardened squares. Taking some hints from Lufega's link, mix the curcumin with melted chocolate, then make coco-chocolate flavored curcumin squares.

Or buy enteric coated capsules. Pour the oil into the capsules. Let them harden and then finish capping. Or put in regular capsules and dip in an enteric solution. This thread has links to a bulk enteric capsule supplier (100,000 capsules at a time) and gadgets for dipping regular capsules in an enteric solution. There are two suppliers for enteric solutions in the thread.

I think a soft silicone pan for dipping and a CapMQuik machine might be enough equipment to do your own enteric coating. All that is really needed is a capsule holder that will allow half of a filled capsule to be dipped, then turned over, push all the capsules to expose the uncoated surface, and dip again.

[stephen_b]

Ways to improve bio-availibility:

1: Co-supplementation with 20 mg of piperine (extracted from black pepper) significantly increased the absorption of curcumin by 2000%.
Peperine is what is used in the LEF brand enhanced curcumin, but it heavily interacts with other meds one may be taking, and I believe is generally frowned upon here.

2: Disolve in oil Curcumin is fully soluable in oil. Ideally we would want the smallest particles possible. Perhaps someone is more familiar with the mechanics of how something like curcumin would be 'disolved' in an oil. I'm not sure if it would disolve in a similiar manner as it would in ethanol, or whether a lipid emulsion would form where lipid droplets form around the drug. Either way, disolving in oil is a good way to go, however reducing particle size before hand may be important. This is probably the most practical method if you are going to put curcumin in a food dish.

3: Ethanol + PEG 3350 This should work just as well in curcumin as it does in resveratrol. Directions: Disolve curcumin in ethanol (everclear will do), then mix in a PEG3350 (miralax) and water solution.


4: DMSO Curcumin should dislove well in DMSO.

Curcumin is a small molecule (368 Da, compared to transresveratrol at 228 Da). Mixing it up with resveratrol is appealing. Any thoughts about how this combination might pair?

Heating curcumin mildly increases its water solubility (PMID 17767425):

We report here that the water solubility of curcumin could be increased from 0.6 μg/ml to 7.4 μg/ml (12-fold increase) by the use of heat. Spectrophotometric (400–700 nm) and mass spectrometric profiling of the heat-extracted curcumin displays no significant heat-mediated disintegration of curcumin.

Is this much better? I don't know how this compares to mixing it in oil. Curcumin tea, anyone?

[okok]

as buccal resv. seems to be the most effective route, i wonder if this might apply to curcumin too?

Edited by okok, 18 July 2009 - 04:55 PM.

[stephen_b]

Bioavailability calculations

Plain curcumin: 0.6 microg/ml solubility
Curcumin tea: 7.4 microg/ml solubility

2g of plain curcumin peaks in the blood at 149.8 ng/g (1.629 umol/l by my calculation) 2 hours after ingestion^{R (page 447, second column)}. Twelve times that would be 20.09 umol/l. Taking this amount of curcumin as a tea might be a little rough. I just drank a cup of tea using 600 mg of curcumin extract, which should give a blood plasma concentration of 6.0 umol/l in two hours time, if the blood plasma relationship scales linearly with curcumin solubility. Hopefully my math is right.

From this study, 10g of curcumin peaked at 6.1 umol (about 2.25 ug/ml from figure 3). That makes sense compared with the 2g results from the first reference.

If everything works as hoped, 600 mg of curcumin tea packs the punch of 10g of plain curcumin as far as blood plasma levels go.

StephenB

Edited by stephen_b, 18 July 2009 - 05:46 PM.

[david ellis]

Stephen, don't you worry about staining your teeth yellow? using curcumin tea. Curcumin stains my bathroom sink, regular cleansers don't work, but alcohol does work.

[stephen_b]

I'm not sure it will be a problem. Curries don't yellow the teeth. Also you can chug instead of sip once it cools off. The water takes on a nice orange shade.

[david ellis]

Curcumin is a natural dye. Easily fading, but still a dye. Alcohol will probably wash it out, and chugging is a good idea.

[niner]

Bioavailability calculations

Plain curcumin: 0.6 microg/ml solubility
Curcumin tea: 7.4 microg/ml solubility

2g of plain curcumin peaks in the blood at 149.8 ng/g (1.629 umol/l by my calculation) 2 hours after ingestion^{R (page 447, second column)}. Twelve times that would be 20.09 umol/l. Taking this amount of curcumin as a tea might be a little rough. I just drank a cup of tea using 600 mg of curcumin extract, which should give a blood plasma concentration of 6.0 umol/l in two hours time, if the blood plasma relationship scales linearly with curcumin solubility. Hopefully my math is right.

From this study, 10g of curcumin peaked at 6.1 umol (about 2.25 ug/ml from figure 3). That makes sense compared with the 2g results from the first reference.

If everything works as hoped, 600 mg of curcumin tea packs the punch of 10g of plain curcumin as far as blood plasma levels go.

If you can only dissolve 7.4 mcg curcumin in one ml, then you are going to need a lot of water to dissolve 600mg.

600mg curcumin * (1ml/7.4mcg) * (1000mcg/mg) * (1 liter/1000ml) = 81 liters (!)

So there's something wrong with the curcumin tea methodology. Most of the curcumin must be undissolved, but dispersed in the dark yellow/orange solution it's probably too hard to see. I think you'll have better results with some sort of oil/water emulsion, where most of the curcumin is in the oil.

[stephen_b]

If you can only dissolve 7.4 mcg curcumin in one ml, then you are going to need a lot of water to dissolve 600mg.

600mg curcumin * (1ml/7.4mcg) * (1000mcg/mg) * (1 liter/1000ml) = 81 liters (!)

So there's something wrong with the curcumin tea methodology. Most of the curcumin must be undissolved, but dispersed in the dark yellow/orange solution it's probably too hard to see. I think you'll have better results with some sort of oil/water emulsion, where most of the curcumin is in the oil.

Maybe 'dissolved' in the sense used in chemistry is not the main issue. The tests with 2g of plain curcumin were (I'd imagine) just curcumin in capsules taken with a glass of water. The 2g control dose was in contrast to the 4x500mg capsules of the BCM-95 formulation.

One thing I'm uncertain about is whether the amount of curcumin in the blood is as important as the amount in the lymphatic system (from here):

Curcumin that is dissolved in fat will be introduced into the lymphatic system with the fat. There is exactly where we want curcumin to be introduced into the body. The lymphatic fluid bathes all the tissues in the body. We are NOT interested in directly introducing it into the blood.

People complain about the taste of curcumin. So add other spices, such as turmeric, or other spices to the mix to change the taste.

How much curcumin do we need to treat cancer and leukemia? No one knows but I would recommend at least 10 grams a day, 5 grams twice a day dissolved in fat. Since curcumin is not toxic, why screw around with low doses?

Steve is trying to develop an anti-cancer protocol in which the lymphatic system might be particularly involved. Any thoughts on where we want curcumin to go?

StephenB

[youandme]

Hi StephenB

Curious to know how the Curcumin Tea Tasted ?

THanks

[stephen_b]

It wasn't bad at all. Much milder than I expected.

[david ellis]

Maybe 'dissolved' in the sense used in chemistry is not the main issue. The tests with 2g of plain curcumin were (I'd imagine) just curcumin in capsules taken with a glass of water. The 2g control dose was in contrast to the 4x500mg capsules of the BCM-95 formulation.

One thing I'm uncertain about is whether the amount of curcumin in the blood is as important as the amount in the lymphatic system (from here):

Steve is trying to develop an anti-cancer protocol in which the lymphatic system might be particularly involved. Any thoughts on where we want curcumin to go?

StephenB

One 480 mg capsule of curcumin mixed with coconut oil drives my CRP down to .7 mg/L. Not bad for a 70 year old body, younger bodies should get even lower CRP readings.

I think Steve has something. Coconut oil is 67% MCT, and MCT moves directly into the lymphatic portal from the GI tract. No bile salts or digestive energy is needed for absorption by the blood, this is quick and easy.

To avoid staining my teeth, I mix the oil with all of the powders I take -Cal/Mag, threonine, etc.

And then I put the powder on my tongue and wash the powder down. Very neat, because the powder is slightly moistened by a tablespoon of coconut oil, it doesn't dryly stick to my mouth and washes cleanly away. (Sorry about all the detail, but getting a lot of powder down isn't easy, and maybe some need hints)

[Scottza]

I inhale it.

I tap a bottle on the counter and then open and inhale moderately just off the top.

I do not want so much as to irritate...only small airbourne paricles that escape the jar.

I have not tried to ascertain my dosage...but this would seem to circumvent the challenges of digestion.

Crazy?

[niner]

I inhale it.

[...]

Crazy?

Yup. You don't want to get insoluble small particles in your lungs. If they are small enough, they can get down to where the cilia can't sweep them out. The will sit there and do god knows what, such as causing inflammation via physical irritation.

[cat@]

This is an old post, but... has anyone tried: Thorne Research, Meriva-SR, Curcumin Phytosome, 120 Veggie Caps (can be found at iHerb).

[joelcairo]

Following up on that bit about inhaling curcumin - inhaling turmeric smoke is an Ayurvedic remedy for various maladies of the respiratory tract. I don't know about the possibility of systemic absorption, but it might be interesting to try it for something like lung cancer. I don't know much at all about the microenvironment of lung cancer, but getting the bioactive substances in direct contact with the tumor from the surface side might be an interesting complement to getting them there via blood vessels.

[daver]

I'm 66 and have been taking Nutivene curcumin (Longvida 500 mg) one a day at lunch for the last six months. Just received the results of a yearly blood test and noted these changes since a year ago:
LDL down from 106 to 88
HDL down from 41 to 37
Total testosterone down from 804 to 507
Free testosterone down from 15.1 to 8.3
Estradiol down from 31 to 20
CRP up a little
Besides curcumin, other changes I made since last year are: added PQQ, Neuro-Mag,and 200-300 mg caffeine; increased nettle root; and stopped taking bht and strontium citrate.
Looks like Longvida gets into the body and does it's thing at only 1 a day, but I'm unhappy and am going to do without it at least until next year's blood test. Incidentally, my TSH which has been going up, went down from 4.26 to 2.58, which I attribute to the caffeine use.

[unbreakable]

I'm out of curcumin supplements at the moment so I do the following and would like to hear your opinion on it:

Mix 1 tablespoon of turmeric powder with a little bit (ground) black pepper, dissolve in olive oil and add strong cold green tea (with lemon juice), stir 1-2 minutes and drink, after that water. I usually take my fish oil supplement at the same time.

I want to increase the bioavailability of curcumin (+ that of epicatechin with lemon juice) and potentiate some of the positive effects of curcumin with green tea + EPA/DHA. Thoughts?

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/20606042