"Turmeric, Curcumin, And Rheumatoid Arthritis"
According to the World Health Organization,
80% of the Earth's inhabitants rely upon
traditional medicines for their primary health-care needs,
in part due to the high cost of Western pharmaceuticals.
Medicines derived from plants have played a pivotal role
in the health care of both ancient and modern cultures.
One of the prime sources of plant-derived medicines is spices.
Turmeric is one such spice known around the world by different names,
my favorite of which is probably zard-choobag.
Turmeric is the dried powdered root stalks of the turmeric plant,
a member of the ginger family,
from which the orange-yellow pigment curcumin can be extracted.
The spice turmeric is what makes curry powder yellow,
and curcumin is what makes turmeric yellow.
The molecule even looks cool.
I always thought it kind of looked like crab.
Anyways, in recent years more than 5,000 articles
have been published in the medical literature about curcumin.
Many sport impressive looking diagrams suggesting
curcumin can benefit a multitude of conditions
via a dizzying array of mechanisms.
Curcumin was first isolated more than a century ago,
but out of the thousands of experiments,
just a handful in the 20th century were clinical studies,
involving actual human participants.
But since the turn-of-the-century
more than 50 clinical trials have been done,
testing curcumin against a variety of human diseases,
with 84 more clinical trials on the way.
But most of the 5,000 were just in vitro lab studies,
which I've resisted covering until
they, you know, moved more out of the Petri dish and into the person.
But this study got my attention.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic systemic inflammatory disorder
that causes progressive destruction of the cartilage and bone of joints.
The long-term prognosis of RA is poor
with as much as 80% of patients affected becoming disabled
with a reduction of years in life expectancy.
There's lots of drugs one can take,
but unfortunately they're often associated with severe side effects
including blood loss, and bone loss, and bone marrow suppression,
and toxicity to the liver and eyes.
There's got to be a better way.
Well, efficacy of curcumin was first demonstrated over 30 years ago.
A double-blind crossover study: curcumin versus phenylbutazone,
a powerful anti-inflammatory drug they use in race horses.
Both drugs showed significant improvement
in morning stiffness, walking time, joint swelling,
with a complete absence of any side effects in the curcumin group,
which is more than can be said for phenylbutazone,
which was pulled from the market three years later
for wiping out some peoples' immune systems and their lives.
Here's the latest.
Forty-five patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis
were randomized into three groups:
curcumin, the standard of care drug, or both.
The primary endpoint was a reduction in disease activity,
as well as a reduction in joint tenderness and swelling.
All three groups got better, but interestingly
the curcumin groups showed the highest percentage of improvement,
significantly better than those in the drug group.
The findings are significant, demonstrating that curcumin alone
was not only safe and effective, but surprisingly more effective
in alleviating any pain compared to the leading drug of choice,
all without any apparent adverse side effects.
In fact curcumin appeared protective,
given that there were more adverse reactions in the drug group
than the combined drug and curcumin group.
In contrast to the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs,
curcumin has no gastrointestinal side effects
and may even protect the lining of the stomach.