by Chris Shugart
What Works, What Doesn't
Turmeric-curcumin is one of today's hottest health foods and supplements. Sadly, it's not doing much for you unless you get the right kind.
Some people are geeks. You're probably geeky too about something. A geek is someone obsessively interested in and knowledgeable about a particular thing.
For example, when regular people follow a recipe calling for vanilla, they grab some imitation extract. Not ingredient geeks! Nope, those nerds scrape out real vanilla bean pods, probably from Madagascar. They're total geeks… and awesome cooks.
Everyone who takes supplements should be a geek, too. After all, these are substances you pay for and put into your body to get an effect. I'm a supplement ingredient geek, and here's what you need to know about turmeric and curcumin (Buy at Amazon) supplements.
What's Curcumin and What Does It Do?
Curcumin is a diarylheptanoid, a type of polyphenol. As you know by now, curcumin comes from the orangy spice turmeric. Curcumin has been heavily studied and refined by modern science, but its roots go back centuries in Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine.
Curcumin's benefits are many, so many that it sounds a little too good to be true, but they're all backed by science and tons of studies. Here's a quick rundown:
- It's a natural anti-inflammatory and pain reliever.
- It mildly boosts testosterone, controls excess estrogen, and kills baby fat cells.
- It improves heart health, dissolves arterial plaques, and protects arteries against high blood pressure.
- It reduces the risk of diabetes and blocks many viral infections.
- It aids in muscle recovery and performance.
- It improves strength and endurance.
- It improves erections and sexual functioning.
- It helps keep you from regaining fat after dieting.
- It modulates various signaling pathways that promote longevity.
- It helps you fight the effects of excess stress.
Now, will you get all those benefits from eating turmeric-spiced curry or even taking standard curcumin supplements? Well, that's where we need to get geeky.
What the Geek Knows About Turmeric
Sadly, eating turmeric-seasoned foods or drinking teas or bright orange smoothies doesn't do squat. Turmeric doesn't contain enough curcuminoids, the active ingredient, to do much. And the good stuff you do get from eating tons of turmeric isn't very bioavailable – you don't absorb much.
Regular curcumin isn’t soluble in the acidic pH of the stomach. When it reaches the neutral or alkaline environment of the large intestine, most of it is converted into inactive waste (glucuronidation). That's how your body rids itself of most things it considers pollutants.
What little raw curcumin that makes its way intact through the large intestine is further broken down by the bacteria in your colon. The now smaller amount that survives this gauntlet gets absorbed into the bloodstream, but then it gets metabolized by liver cells and excreted through bile.
In short, don't bother with turmeric or raw turmeric supplements. Do enjoy your Indian food for the flavor, but the curcumin you get from it isn't doing much of anything.
What the Geek Knows About Ordinary Curcumin Supps
Supplement scientists have been trying for years to extract the active ingredient of curcumin and get enough of it in you to have an effect. First, they added piperine, a black pepper extract. That prevented some of the digestion problems and boosted curcumin absorption 20-fold over raw curcumin.
Next came combining curcumin with fats (liquid droplet nano micelles) and spray drying it. These curcumins had 27 times the bioavailability of pure curcumin. This is where scientists really started seeing curcumin's benefits in studies. But an ingredient geek doesn't stop there.
What the Geek Knows About Micellar Curcumin
Recently, science perfected curcumin supplements. Neuroscientists at UCLA invented a "solid lipid curcumin complex" and patented it as Longvida Optimized Curcumin® (Buy at Amazon). Without using synthetic polysorbates or emulsifiers, it increased curcumin's bioavailability by at least 95 times over raw curcumin.
This micellar technology encapsulates curcumin in micelles – tiny spherical structures formed by amphiphilic molecules.
The curcuminoids survive initial hydrolysis and deliver free curcumin and its metabolites to the brain and throughout the body via the lymphatic system. Take one dose and high levels of curcumin are detected in the bloodstream within an hour and for a day later. That means a single daily dose is all you need.
More than 50 review papers involving humans found Longvida’s Optimized Curcumin® delivers all the health and performance benefits listed above.
The ingredient geek only uses this form of curcumin. It's sold as Micellar Curcumin (Buy at Amazon) The only drawback? It costs more than standard curcumin… but it actually works. A less expensive curcumin/turmeric supplement doesn't exactly save you money if it's not doing anything, right?
