Curcumin's Absorption Problem Is The Whole Story

Three Reasons It Absorbs Badly

Curcumin fails at every stage of getting into you, which is unusual and worth understanding.

It barely dissolves. Curcumin is fat soluble and almost insoluble in water. In the watery environment of the gut, most of it simply never gets into solution.

It falls apart. At the neutral-to-alkaline pH of the small intestine, curcumin is chemically unstable and degrades within minutes.

The liver clears it immediately. Whatever does get absorbed goes straight to the liver, which attaches sugar and sulphate groups to it for excretion. This is first-pass metabolism, and for curcumin it is brutally efficient.

The result is that plasma curcumin after an ordinary oral dose is often barely detectable. Meanwhile the laboratory literature is enormous, because in a dish curcumin does a great many interesting things at concentrations a person will never reach.

What Piperine Does

Piperine is the alkaloid that makes black pepper hot. It inhibits the liver and intestinal enzymes responsible for that first-pass clearance, particularly glucuronidation.

The frequently quoted figure is a two thousand per cent increase in curcumin bioavailability from adding a small amount of piperine, from a study using 20 mg of piperine with 2 g of curcumin. That specific number is quoted more confidently than one study warrants, and the direction of the effect is not in dispute.

It is also why traditional Indian cooking pairs turmeric with black pepper and with fat, which is a reasonable delivery system arrived at without any pharmacology.

The Other Approaches

• Phospholipid complexes. Curcumin bound to phosphatidylcholine, sold under branded names. Reasonable human data behind several of them.
• Liposomal and micellar formulations. Curcumin packaged inside fat droplets. Effective in principle, and quality varies enormously between products.
• Nanoparticle formulations. Smaller particles, more surface area, better dissolution.
• Simply eating it with fat. Free, and it does help, because curcumin is fat soluble. It does nothing about the liver clearance.

How To Read A Turmeric Label

1. Root or extract? Raw turmeric root is 2 to 5 per cent curcuminoids. A standardised extract is 95 per cent. That is a twenty-fold difference in the compound that matters, and the words look nearly identical on a panel.
2. Is a curcuminoid percentage stated? If not, assume root powder.
3. Is there an absorption strategy? Black pepper extract, piperine, a branded phospholipid complex, or a liposomal claim. If none of those appear, there is not one.
4. How much, against the trials? Human studies use 500 to 1,500 mg of standardised extract daily. Compare that against what the label actually declares.

Applying That To This Formula

Turmeric Root is one of fourteen names sharing a 500 mg blend, declared as turmeric root rather than as a standardised extract. There is no black pepper, no piperine and no liposomal claim anywhere on the panel.

Three strikes: a small amount, probably the low-curcuminoid form, with no absorption help. Whatever turmeric is doing here, it is not reproducing the trial literature, and the arithmetic article puts a number on the first of those three.

That is not a reason to avoid the product. It is a reason not to buy it for the turmeric.

What Turmeric Is Actually Good For

Worth ending here, because this article has been hard on it.

At proper doses with an absorption strategy, curcumin has moderate evidence for reducing inflammatory markers and for joint pain. That is a real, useful, unglamorous finding.

Its blood sugar evidence is much weaker and runs indirectly through inflammation. On a glucose panel it is a supporting ingredient at best, which is exactly how its page here grades it.