Re: Bioavailability of curcumin

[Guest guest]

Very interesting information!

I'm taking one curcumin extract capsule and omega3 oil capsules in the morning.

Maybe I should increase to two or three times daily.

From: palulukon <palulukon@...> Sent: Mon, May 17, 2010 10:21:14 PMSubject: [ ] Bioavailability of curcumin

Turmeric is a powerful anti-inflammatory, so as well as helping the stomach problem, it may also be indirectly beneficial for the prostatitis.

Carole in Oz

http://margaret. healthblogs. org/life- with-myeloma/ discovery- of-curcumin/ bioavailability- of-curcumin/

Bioavailability of curcumin

There are several studies online about curcumin’s low bioavailability, which means that most of what we swallow goes directly into our gastrointestinal area and is expelled. Very little remains in the bloodstream about an hour or so after ingestion. However, it is possible that the small amount that does get absorbed is enough to induce apoptosis of the MM cells. Otherwise, curcumin wouldn’t have worked in my case.

Curcumin is not soluble in water, but in fat. When dissolved in fat, curcumin will go directly into the lymphatic system. On the Grouppe Kurosawa website (www.grouppekurosaw a.com) there is a lot of information on the bioavailability of curcumin, such as the following: The lymphatic system bathes all the cells in the body. It also bypasses the liver in what is called the first pass phenomenon. This means that more curcumin gets into the body to interact with cancer cells. Some more scientifically- minded MM listserv members have disputed this, writing that fats do not by-pass the liver. They travel from the stomach to the intestine, where they are digested, and the digestion products travel from there to the lymph, then to the blood, and then to all organs of the body, including the liver. But that’s fat. Curcumin isn’t fat.

The fact remains that my Ig count decreased or remained stable on my coconut milk (fat)-curcumin powder drink. So, whatever the mechanism, some curcumin had and has to be reaching my malignant cells.

Some curcumin-takers advised me to take curcumin capsules together with fish oil or flaxseed oil capsules. Aha, the fat needed for curcumin to be absorbed!

A month or so ago, an Acor listserv subscriber posted a study called the Delano Report, which suggested that quercetin, a flavonoid found in apples, onions, red grapes, citrus fruits, broccoli and so on, would inhibit the sulfotransferase enzymes which render curcumin relatively inactive (for more information, see the Delano Report at: http://tinyurl. com/yyucfp ). As a result, I now take between 1 and 2 grams of quercetin 15 to 30 minutes before curcumin.

Bioavailability update. September 10 2007 post. A blog reader recently posted a comment, with an attached abstract, on this topic, which for obvious reasons is of utmost importance and interest to me and to anybody else who takes curcumin. The abstract (http://tinyurl. com/2t73w5) reports that the bioavailability of curcumin is enhanced with HEAT. Key sentence: 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. A 12-fold increase in water solubility? That’s nothing to sneeze at. These researchers also found [ ] no significant heat-mediated disintegration of curcumin. Well we certainly do NOT want curcumin to disintegrate, do we? Now, I already knew that curcumin dissolves in fats (I have seen that happen with my own eyes) and I have read that it dissolves in alcohol (bring on the vodka, hic!), but heat? And then, boom!, it hit

me. When I first started taking curcumin, I mixed the powder with very warm, but not boiling, coconut milk. At that time I hadn’t even heard of bioperine nor was I taking any oil capsules. I had simply read that it was best to take curcumin powder mixed with a fat. I drank this concoction for months. And by the way, after the first eight weeks my IgG count went down almost 20 %.

Consideration. As I have said before, curcumin is not water-soluble. However, recently another blog reader commented that she mixes her curcumin with heated organic whole milk. She wrote that one day she ran out of milk but managed, eventually, to dissolve her curcumin in hot water. Well, so this heating curcumin business may make sense after all. Another consideration: back in May I wrote a post on a study (http://tinyurl. com/2fh26z) that examined the degradation of curcumin when heated up. I reread it yesterday and found that curcumin was affected after being boiled in water for ten and twenty minutes.

>>>>> curcumin will dissolve in alkaline aqueous solutions, but not acid solutions. The stomach is very acidic but the small intestine is very alkaline.