It almost sounds too good to be true, but a common spice used in Asian dishes has been shown to have potent anti-cancer properties. Baylor University researchers have found that curcumin — the active ingredient in turmeric, used in curry dishes — can bolster the effects of chemotherapy for colon cancer patients and may suppresses tumor growth.
The study — led by Ajay Goel, M.D., director of the Department of Epigenetics and Cancer Prevention at Baylor — indicates curcumin sensitizes cancer cells to the effects of chemotherapy and reduces DNA damage that can lead to cancer. That could make curcumin a powerful new weapon in the war on cancer by dramatically improving the effectiveness of chemo in treating the many patients who don't respond to it or become resistant to its effects over time.
"Colon cancer is still the third leading cause of deaths in the U.S. and … the reason there are so many deaths associated with colon cancer is that it is diagnosed at a very late state and the patients who are put on treatment with different drugs that we have available — there are challenges with those drugs," Dr. Goel tells Newsmax Health.
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"One of the challenges with the drugs that we're using is that 15 to 20 percent of patients do not respond to these drugs at all. And another 40 to 50 percent of patients who respond to these drugs … [eventually] develop chemo resistance and they stop responding to the treatment. And even if they do respond initially they will relapse and the tumor will come back."
But what Dr. Goel's research found was that curcumin makes cancer cells more vulnerable to chemo, which can benefit not only those cancer patients who are initially resistant to drugs but also those who develop resistance over time.
"The hope [is] that by including curcumin [with chemotherapy] we can reduce the toxicity from chemo drugs, we can help overcome the resistance which tumor cells develop, and possibly can help these patients with a better quality of life," he says.
As a result, he explains: "You can reduce the dose of chemo, you can minimize or mitigate the toxicity of chemo, and by including curcumin in [treatment] you actually enhance the efficacy of curcumin and chemo together in killing tumor cells and helping these patients."
Although you can derive the benefits of curcumin by eating foods that contain turmeric, such as South Asian and Indian curry dishes, most Americans don't eat enough of it to make a difference. Consequently, taking a curcumin supplement — Dr. Goeal recommends a commercially available formulation known as BCM-95 that is up 10 times more potent than standard curcumin — makes more sense for most Americans.
"It is probably the most natural form of curcumin you can find," he says, noting he takes 250 milligrams of it each day. "It is not only all natural, it is devoid of any synthetic chemicals…and is better absorbed [and] stays in the body longer."
Curcumin is not only beneficial to cancer patients. Last year, Dr. Goel found that the spice compound has powerful antidepressant effects, as well. In a study published last year, he found the spice compound is nearly as powerful as Prozac in relieving symptoms of depression in people suffering from the mental-health disorder after just six weeks.
"What we found was that patients who received actually curcumin and Prozac together … almost 80 percent of the patients were able to see [a] benefit," he says. "But the most exciting part to me was that the [patients] that received BCM-95 curcumin alone … had the same level of efficacy as the group receiving Prozac alone …
"So this is extremely encouraging that a natural, safe compound such as curcumin has the same level of efficacy as a synthetic drug such as Prozac."
Dr. Goel suspects the spice compound's antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties account for its beneficial effects — against both cancer and depression.
"I believe that there is definitely overlap between the mechanism, and as I alluded before, inflammation plays a big role," he explains. "Chronic low levels of inflammation [are] actually involved in most chronic diseases and cancer is one of those diseases, as a chronic disease, so is depression.
"So definitely there is an overlap and curcumin, to my knowledge, is probably one of most potent naturally occurring spice[s] with such a strong anti-inflammatory activity and definitety that is probably one of the key reasons we are seeing the spectrum of efficacy of curcumin."
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