Ten Most Commonly Asked Questions about Turmeric and Curcumin

Today’s blog entry is about turmeric, one of the most misunderstood, misused, and misappropriated substances in the Ayurvedic spice rack.  For those who’d rather listen than read, I’ve also made a youtube video about the 10 most commonly asked questions I get about Turmeric and my opinions about this spice and medicine.  As always, these thoughts are not to be taken as medical advice.  Always consult your doctor (DO or MD).

(1) What is turmeric? 

Turmeric’s scientific name is curcuma longa. It’s a rhizome, an underground stem, of a plant that’s in the ginger family. It’s native to India and Southeast Asia, and it’s been used by people of these regions for thousands of years as a food and as a medicine. It can be consumed fresh—in India, this is usually in a pickled form, or as a powder. It can also be juiced. It’s called haridrā in Sanskrit, haldī in Hindi, and halad in Marathi, to give you a few of its native names. 

(2) What are its traditional uses in India? 

In Ayurvedic medicine, turmeric is used:

-topically for a variety of skin conditions, including skin infections. 

-to improve the skin’s appearance. In traditional Indian weddings, both the bride and the groom apply a paste of turmeric, mixed along with other ingredients such as sandalwood, onto their skin to enhance the skin’s glow.

-as a food coloring and flavoring agent

-for coughs and colds

-as an antiparasitic medication

-as an anti-itch medicine

-as a medicine to treat Type II Diabetes, urinary tract infections, gout, and even hemorrhoids

-as a regulator of the immune system, as a liver tonic, and even as a hair remover

-as a dye for fabrics.

Turmeric has always been used in Hindu ceremonies.  It’s very much a part of the everyday culture.  You can’t have India without turmeric. I want to acknowledge that of course, there are other cultures that have used turmeric since antiquity- but I don’t know enough to speak about them.

In Ayurveda, it’s always preferred to take any medicine as a food.  Turmeric is no exception.  It’s used in cooking and you only need a little bit.

With all of its amazing traditional uses, it caught the eye of scientists who wanted to study it and figure out why it was such a magical spice. 

(3) What is curcumin? 

People often ask me— What’s the difference between curcumin and turmeric? Aren’t they the same thing?

They’re not. Curcumin is just one chemical isolated or extracted from turmeric, and it gives turmeric its characteristic yellow color. It belongs to a larger family of chemicals called curcuminoids.  Since its discovery, it’s been glorified as a miracle compound.  I’ll use a cliche here—turmeric is greater than the sum of its parts.  We still don’t know all the different chemicals that it contains.  Curcumin is only one small chemical component of the turmeric rhizome. So therefore, turmeric should be consumed as whole food so we don’t miss out on other important compounds that may not have yet been discovered by modern science. Just like, proverbially, we eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away, right? Nobody ever said, “a capsule of malic acid,” or “a tablet of farnesene keeps the doctor away.” Just because these chemicals are key components of apples, we don’t equate them with the WHOLE fruit.  We don’t swallow capsules filled with these chemicals as apple substitutes. 

You may remember the hype around beta-carotene in the 1990s. It’s a chemical that can be found in food such as carrots. It was quite a celebrated supplement in its heyday until a couple of studies showed that it may increase the risk of lung cancer in smokers. It lost its sexy status almost overnight. But you and I know, using our common sense, that whole foods containing beta carotene are not going to hurt you, unless of course, you overdose on them. And it does happen—people can literally turn ORANGE. This is a condition called carotenemia or carotenosis.

(4) How is curcumin taken, and how is it dosed? AND

(5) How is turmeric take and how is it dosed?

You generally buy curcumin in tablet or capsule form. The same goes for turmeric.  

The strengths and dosages are really high, in fact they’re very high. 500mg of curcumin twice daily is a common dose, while 1500 mg of turmeric three times daily is a common dose. This is really over-the-top. Sometimes I feel in the supplement industry, the motto is “go big or go home.”  Why is it so hard to imagine that food can be medicine? Is that too simplistic? Is it not trendy enough? I recently read a case about a doctor administering a turmeric emulsion intravenously to a woman, causing her to DIE. There IS such a thing as too much of a good thing! 

(6) What are curcumin’s side effects? 

Curcumin supplements MAY slow down blood clotting, so if you must take curcumin, your doctor may have you stop it a couple of weeks before a scheduled surgery. It may also interact with anticoagulant and antiplatelet drugs. Bottom line: If you’re taking it, please tell your doctor you’re on it. He or she will appreciate it.

Curcumin, IN ISOLATION, is considered an estrogen-like compound; so this can, in theory, in the megadoses consumed, worsen hormone-sensitive conditions such as certain breast/uterine/ovarian cancers. In theory, it may also affect sperm count. Realistically, though, look at the population of India where close to 100% of the population ingests turmeric which contains curcumin. Why does the country overall (I’m not talking about individual cases of infertility here) seem to NOT have a male fertility problem? Because nobody is popping curcumin capsules in India. They don’t now, nor did they ever. People are not ingesting megadoses of isolated curcumin which of course can be expected to have side effects.

(7) So if curcumin’s no good, is it better then, to take turmeric capsules?

The answer again is “No.” Because again, this this is a reductionist approach, much like taking curcumin.  It’s an oversimplified solution, and not a good one.  If one have a problem, say knee pain, then a turmeric supplement—just because turmeric contains anti-inflammatory  compounds— isn’t going to magically fix it.  The first thing to do would be to look at other things first, such as modest weight loss or exercise, or changing one’s diet, you can visit websites like lizzardco.com to get the best advice.  Taking high doses of supplements cannot cancel out years of an unhealthy lifestyle or diet.

Besides this, let’s consider other reasons why this is not a good medical practice, from a Western medical standpoint or an Ayurvedic medical standpoint.

First of all, 1 gram of turmeric powder measures out to be almost 1/2 a teaspoon. So if you’re taking 1500mg three times a day, you’re taking about 2 to 2.25 teaspoons of raw turmeric powder a day.  That’s a little less than how much I put into a pot of khichadi that serves 4-5 adults with second helpings.  Imagine taking that much raw turmeric powder every day for years?  Something bad is bound to happen.  Because the powder is ALREADY a concentrated (dehydrated) version of the root!  If turmeric powder is about 2% curcumin by weight, how many of those rhizomes are you eating when you take a curcumin supplement?  Even as an Ayurvedic supplement in India, most people do not ingest more than 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder a day. If they take turmeric as a supplement, it’s generally mixed into milk or another oily vehicle and it’s taken for a short period of time. It’s a powerful medicine.  Therefore you need very little. Much like you don’t use a steamroller to fold a piece of origami paper, you don’t need such a large daily dose of turmeric.

Another disadvantage from an Ayurvedic point of view, is that a capsule will bypass the tongue. Turmeric needs to physically come in contact with the tongue and saliva.  When we taste it and recognize it as food that’s when digestion truly begins to take place.  We all know that digestion actually starts when we smell, or look at, or even think of food, because these sensations send messages to our brain which in turn sends messages to get our saliva and other digestive juices flowing. A capsule would bypass this first critical phase of digestion. 

(8) How should turmeric be consumed if not in pill form?

Properties of Haldi per the Ayurveda texts are: bitter, pungent, drying (ruksha), light (laghu) and hot (ushna). When cooking it, to balance these properties we have to use substances with opposite qualities. And therefore, turmeric is never used alone in Indian dishes, it is always combined with other spices such as cumin, coriander, and fennel.   Also, a fat has to be involved in the cooking process, because turmeric has molecules that are fat-soluble as well as water-soluble.  So we heat turmeric in a fat such as oil or ghee. Or, we heat it in milk because not only is milk a fatty substance, but because it is considered a cooling substance.  So you can see how in a capsule form or by simply adding turmeric powder to water, we’re going to get less bioavailability.  When the drug isn’t used properly by the body, we run into side effects. This is why adding turmeric powder or turmeric root (if you’re trying to embrace the whole food philosophy) to ice-cold predominantly water-based smoothies is a bad idea. To sum it up, turmeric has to be (a) physically heated—even though it is considered a “hot” spice (b) heated in an oil or fat and (c) balanced out with other “cooling” spices.  The Ayurvedic concept of hot and cool foods will be taken up in another post, hopefully soon.

(9) Why are large doses of turmeric or curcumin put into those capsules?  

This is because turmeric and curcumin have poor bioavailability—when they are not cooked properly, like I just talked about in question number 8.  So to fix this, black pepper is often added to the capsule to enhance bioavailability. Well, now we have another problem on our hands! According to Ayurveda, black pepper is considered another hot and pungent substance. With the additive effect of two similarly heating spices you run into problems such as gastroesophageal reflux, heartburn, worsening peptic ulcers. The supplement may even drop your blood sugar.

(10) Are my doctors close-minded when they dissuade me from taking supplements such as curcumin? 

So my take, as someone who practices both Western and Eastern medicine, with love for both schools of thought: Your doctor (MD or DO) is right to look at curcumin suspiciously. After all, it does have its problems. I think we’d be better off if we ditched the curcumin, and abandoned the practice of ingesting molecules taken out of context, extracted using our limiting myopia. I’ll bet we haven’t even discovered 1/10th of the molecules in most plants. So let food, in its original package, created by God and/or evolution, be your medicine. You may experience some temporary benefit while taking a supplement, but the side effects WILL catch up to you, eventually.

The next time a miracle herb is touted we should all think critically. Many of these herbs, if not taken properly, or if not processed the way their original discoverers have been using them for generations, can be dangerous. Moreover, they can interact with the other medicines you are taking. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Listen to your gut.

For more information about Ayurveda and about my practice, please be sure to explore my website threeriversayurveda.com