This one is fun because I was just having a conversation about turmeric at the lunch table this week. One of my coworkers brought up how it was reportedly a super food (well ... super spice) with amazing health benefits!
A cursory internet search will provide you with article after article after article discussing just how wonderful turmeric is for you!
10 Turmeric Benefits: Superior to Medications?
WOW!
10 Proven Health Benefits of Turmeric and Curcumin
AMAZING TELL ME MORE!!
We can look in these articles and see claims like:
Turmeric contains bio-active compounds with powerful medicinal properties. These compounds are called curcuminoids, the most important of which is curcumin. Curcumin is the main active ingredient in turmeric. It has powerful anti-inflammatory effects and is a very strong antioxidant.
In fact turmeric is reported to cure: Acne, MRSA, Alzheimer's , Arthritis, Cancer, Diarrhea, Erectile Dysfunction and Super Aids. AND SO MUCH MORE!!!
...However
A recent publication in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry titled "The Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Curcumin" throws a bunch of cold water all over those claims.
Natural Products Often Lead To Effective Drugs
There have been a wide variety of drug's that have been developed from traditional medicine, and so turmeric with its active compound curcumin was a very attractive candidate for research. The authors state that curcumin "has shown excellent promise in early testing, even though this testing may have been bedeviled by design problems that lead to several misfires." Publications keep piling up by the hundreds based on the reported activity and therapeutic magic of curcumin.
Yet the authors were unable to locate one single randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial where curcumin has been proven effective effective for treatment of anything.
What they did find was:
Curcumin is a PAINS
PAINS stands for pan-assay interference compounds, which are compounds which show activity by interfering with assay readouts rather than through actual compound/target interactions. Curcumin is a PAINS (in the ass...eer...) because it does a lot of different things that can obscure accurate quantification in an assay! It has been shown to covalently bind to proteins (aka it reacts and sticks to them), bind up and sequester metals ( metal ions are often important cofactors necessary for assay functioning), disrupt cell membranes, interfere with fluorescence among others, and worst of all the compound is prone to aggregation (aka clumping together into a big mass) at higher concentrations. Assays which don't account for the plethora of potential interference properties are prone to false positives.
Curcumin Is Unstable
Good drug compounds are required to be stable under "physiological conditions." This means an environment where water is the solvent, the pH is around 7.4 and the temperature is human body temp or around 37 °C, unfortunately the authors report that curcumin possesses none of those properties!
The article presents an extensive review of the literature reports of the activity of the compound.
The authors found that reported activity in publications was found to occur at concentrations above that at which the compound aggregates, in most cases other interference possibilities were not taken into account in assay design, and nobody seemed to take the stability of the compound into consideration.
The Authors Conclude
At first, curcumin appeared to offer great potential for the development of a therapeutic from turmeric. Unfortunately, no form of curcumin, or its closely related analogues, appears to possess the properties required for a good drug candidate. The in vitro interference properties of curcumin do, however, offer many traps that can trick unprepared researchers into misinterpreting the results of their investigations
In short, curcumin doesn't do anything. If turmeric does have beneficial properties to human health its not because of curcumin like we were being lead to believe. Still turmeric is likely not the magic cure-all that people wish it was.
However There Is One Thing that Turmeric Still Is..
Delicious
I love turmeric, it adds a wonderful nutty flavor! Indian and Asian cuisine that incorporate it are incredibly great foods. If you eat these things because you love them, keep right on doing it. However the research indicates that if you are eating turmeric because of its amazing health benefits, you probably aren't getting what you are bargaining for.
Sources
- http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.6b00975
- http://www.clearskinforever.net/turmeric-acne-does-turmeric-help-acne/
- https://www.earthclinic.com/cures/turmeric-cure-for-mrsa.html
- https://draxe.com/turmeric-benefits/
- https://authoritynutrition.com/top-10-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-turmeric/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781139/
- http://www.arthritis.org/living-with-arthritis/treatments/natural/supplements-herbs/guide/turmeric.php
- http://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2009/11/a-natural-approach-to-erectile-dysfunction-that-improves-vascular-health/page-01
All non Cited Images Are Available Under Creative Commons Licenses, The Primary Article From The Journal of Medicinal Chemistry is also Open Access and Available for Use Under a Creative Commons Licence
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