Curcumin for Alzheimers

OK my recent cynicism on the weight loss 'benefits' of curcumin I posted recently are maybe a little harsh. I am a skeptic, as a friend of mine emailed to me in regard to my June 2 post. In fact, she said, "You are brutal." Ok so maybe I am, I just have to deal with it. Ok so let me talk about a health benefit I am more optimistic about for curcumin: neurodegeneration. My grandmother had dementia but I was too young to be able to help her. But in her memory I try to figure things out as if she was still with us, maybe weird but whatever. While there is still no decent treatment for Alzheimers (although approved) aricept and bapineuzumab are not my idea of effective AD treatments. They dont work plus they have terrible side effects. A recent clinical study on curcumin for Alzheimers was null. But my interest in bioavailability made me look into curcumin further. I have always liked the research on turmeric but wondered why it showed all these great things in the animal models but not in humans. Apparently curcumin has bioavailability issues. So the story goes, most pharmaceuticals have a bunch of money that they can figure out what maximizes absorption. But natural compounds, since they are hard to patent, dont get the money thrown their way by industry. But sometimes the universities come up with good things, if they get funded by someone like the NIH. So I came across something interesting the other night in this regard. Apparently the UCLA Alzheimers Center has been working on curcumin for a number of years and they have filed patents on a curcumin formulation that might work. So I just found this out and am going to research more and will report on it shortly.

Curcumin may help you lose weight?!?

I downloaded the full text of the recent study published in the Journal of Nutrition (a decent journal) on curcumin in fat cells and obese mice that has received some media attention. Overall, the study was well designed and had statistically significant findings with regard to weight loss and blood cholesterol in mice fed a high-fat diet with or without curcumin. The amount of curcumin in diet was not extremely high at 500mg/kg (500ppm) in diet (meaning that humans might be able to achieve this dose). The fact that the curcumin was mixed into a high-fat diet (curcumin is fat-soluble) probably increased its bioavailability significantly, and given that they determined the concentration at which there is an inhibition of angiogenesis (5uM, or about 1500ng/mL), I would have liked to see them measure the bioavailability in the fatty diet compared to simple gavage in water (as is usually done in animal studies with curcumin) to see if curcumin reached the blood levels needed to inhibit angiogenesis. The authors summarized the mechanism by which curcumin acts on fat cells:

"we have made interesting observations that curcumin has the ability to inhibit angiogenesis in adipose tissue, decrease differentiation of preadipocytes, and reduce accumulation of lipids in adipocytes and liver, all of which contribute to a lower growth of adipose tissue, lower body weight gain and obesity." (J Nutr 2009 May;139(5):page 923)

It is worth noting that a high fat diet given to mice may only loosely represent the diet that us humans enjoy so much. While positive animal studies abound, well-designed clinical trials demonstrating significant weight loss using non-stimulants are few and far between. It is probably safe to say that no pill will ever substitute for balanced, low-calorie diet and exercise--with deepest apologies to the acai scam marketers "as found on Oprah"; and Alli, who helps you lose weight by making it run down your leg--but God knows, we will keep trying.