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.