Does This Popular Supplement Give You Liver Failure? – Academy of Chiropractic Nutrition

If there is one thing the main stream media love to do, it is build something up and then knock if down again.

From celebrities to health trends, nothing sells like fear, loathing and righteous indignation.

One minute you are the toast of the health town.

And the next minute, you have been taken down off the pedestal and given a telling off for giving people liver failure.

And yes, this is about turmeric, but the devil is in the details.

You see, the active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin and frankly, it is a nightmare to absorb in the blood.

In its natural state, you absorb around 1-2%.

So, someone in the late 1990’s added peperine (found in black pepper, peperine is 4-9% by weight of black pepper), and the rest is history, as it does increase absorption.

But, it is how it does this and what else it does that is a problem.

Yes, it affect transporters in the gut that allow you to absorb more turmeric, but it also is very good at inhibiting the CYP3A4 liver enzyme.

Now, that probably doesn’t mean much to most of you, but check this out.

The CYP enzymes are the 1st phase of detox in the liver, they effectively make molecules “sticky”.

If they do not perform their job, then the molecules do not get removed, and then you are in serious danger.

Then, in the 2nd phase, you bond something to it (a methyl group, sulphur, glutathione, glucuronidate, glycine, taurine), and then it comes out with bile into the gut and is removed via your stool.

But here is the amazing thing, 50% of ALL DRUGS go through (at least partly) one enzyme…..CYP3A4.

So when you inhibit that, you can get serious issues.

Some (not all) of the drugs it metabolises:

– Statins
– Benzodiazepines (valium etc)
– Verapamil, amlodapine (blood pressure)
– Citalopram, sertraline (SSRI’s)
– Diclofenac (NSAID)

It also slows down the phase 2 pathway glucuronidation, which is the main way curcumin is made water-soluble and excreted.

Less glucuronidation → more unmetabolised curcumin in the bloodstream.

From the article about the patient with liver failure

“Grafton was taking turmeric pills that contained 2,250 milligrams of curcumin, a substance that comes from the root of the turmeric plant and black pepper extract.”

So, the issue is twofold: They are taking pills with huge doses of over 2000 mg turmeric AND also taking in doses of piperine that are way higher than you might get from food.

To get 50 mg of peperine which is not uncommon in a supplement, is potentially 1/2 tsp of black pepper per pill. And he was taking multiple pills.

This is bonkers and there is a better way, the PHYTOSOME.

We use PHTYOSOMAL technology, to get our 330 mg curcumin (not 2250 mg 🤯) into the blood.

They compared PHYTOSOMAL curcumin against standard turmeric.

They conclude “the overall curcuminoid absorption was about 29-fold higher for the Phytosome formulation compared to the unformulated reference”

That is 2,900 % higher, no toxic level piperine needed.

But let’s take it even further: It gets into the blood, so what?

Does it get into the cells and does it have a clinical effect?

That is what sorts the players from the poseurs, the stuff from the fluff.

Here is but one sample of the research we have to back up our Curcumin formula, on osteoarthritis in the knee, using 1000 mg of curcumin, over an 8 month period (note this was an extension of the original 3 months study to show the benefits were maintained.

Knee OA, PHYTOSOMAL curcumin vs a control group.

They used the WOMAC score for pain and disability for the knee OA and after 8 months the curcumin group had a total of over 50% reduction in pain and disability.