Turmeric is good. Canadian Doctors studied curcumin presuming it was THE ONLY active ingredient

I am writing here about the recent New York Times article about the lack of efficacy for Turmeric in medical studies done in Canada in some surgical patients. What they had actually studied was Curcurmin in their patients with the presumption that curcurmin is THE active ingredient in turmeric responsible for all it’s beneficial effects.



The same mistake has been made in medical studies before wherein a natural product in this case turmeric is pooh-poohed when an ingredient that makes up less than 5% of the whole natural product -curcurmin is studied and the results are presumed to be applicable to the natural ingredient well accepted and known to be widely beneficial in Ayurveda in the first place. It is likely the reason curcumin was studied was that it has an enormous cost premium as compared to the natural turmeric powder widely available.



Two prior similar mistakes come to mind - walnuts and carrots



Walnuts consumption had been found to be helpful in some way for vascular disease. Medical doctors presumed that the active beneficial ingredient responsible for improved outcomes in walnuts was vitamin E. For many years doctors encouraged all to take over-the-counter vitamin E to help prevent vascular disease. That ended when subsequent studies showed no benefit of vitamin E. No one questions that walnuts are beneficial possibly Due to the omega-3 fatty acids in them.



The same story applies to carrots found to be beneficial in reducing certain cancers. In that case the active ingredient was presumed to be beta carotene which was subsequently studied and no benefit was found. The fallacy of presuming the nature of active ingredient in the natural product was brought forth again. I would like to remind the researchers in Canada of these two studies so that any further planned studies are done with turmeric powder rather than Curcurmin.



My goal here is also to help stop this confusion in the lay public. I believe the Canadian researchers are jumping to conclusions from lack of efficacy in their curcurmin study to questioning Turmeric’s many Long accepted beneficial effects.