I have been planning to post on turmeric in another week or two and this may be a little premature, but with that caveat I will urge that everyone of us take turmeric regularly. Here is why-

As those of you from the old BT know, while I don't rush in where the angels fear to tread, I do actively experiment with likely substances that might help with my PD. I have taken turmeric in tablet form for two years or more. But about a month ago I made a change that is beginning to get my hopes up. As I said, I was going to wait another week or two to say anything, but I am beginning to think that there is more than a little something at work here.

The change that I referred to was to switch from the tablets that I had taken for so long to the whole ground spice itself straight from the grocery store. I did this because of doubts about the absorption I was getting from the tablets due to slow breakdown. Turmeric has low bioavailability any way and dropping a test tablet into a glass of water was not at all encouraging, so I switched to taking a teaspoon mixed with a little yogurt and honey in the morning and again in the evenings. My wife (non-PD) also has been taking it for reasons I will outline below. Also, another PWP has started it about a week and a half ago and is experiencing some very encouraging signs herself. And let us not forget our own Ron Hutton who has been preaching the benefits of the curcumin extract for years.

I originally became interested in turmeric because it is such a tremendous anti-inflammatory. In fact it was one of the first alternative medications that I took up. Ample research backs this up. Just a couple of weeks ago researchers reported *complete* success against rheumatoid arthritis with it as well as the joint osteosporosis associated with RA! More important to us as PWP, it also prevents microglial activation in the brain which is the most critical component of the cascade that ends in neuronal death.

But I knew all that. What I didn't appreciate until recently is the effects upon the HPA axis of turmeric.

HPA stands for hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal. These three organs form a group that pretty much runs your entire body via its control of your endocrine system. There is probably not a single process in our entire bodies that is not impacted in some way by the HPA axis. Insulin-glucose reactions discussed in another thread are governed from this group. Circadian rhythms and sleep patterns ditto. The infamous "fight or flight" and cortisol production. It was once said of the US airlines that everything passed through Atlanta. That is literally true of the HPA axis.

When BT1 failed I was about to post some information on the role of an endotoxin called LPS in the origin and progression of PD. I did end up posting some of it on my Yahoo group PDPower and you can read it there, but to cut to the chase, if a pregnant woman is exposed to this toxin via an infection at critical times in the development of her child, there are certain changes that occur. One is a sensitivity to future encounters with the toxin. A second is a reduced density of neurons in the substantia nigra! And a third is an alterred HPA axis which changes our response to stress.

The work Ron and I did on H. pylori research turned up at least one very interesting tidbit - for reasons unknown PWP have above norm levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. I think the above provides the reason for that. I also think that the above explains why we are so stress sensitive.

In fact, I have become convinced that, contrary to what so many of our doctors think, PD is at heart an endocrine disease. That, in case you don't recognize it, is heresy in most circles.

And the HPA axis is the heart of our endocrine system. Many things can result from insult to this system, even later in life. Diabetes, for example. Post traumatic stress disorder. Depression. Anxiety. All emanate from there.

All of which combined to cause my ears to perk up when I ran across the study I intend to post below. Turmeric fed to a mouse with HPA imbalances reset all the parameters and made a happy mouse! Nobody knows just why. But some of you may be familiar with the concept of a substance being an "adaptogen", i.e. a compound that is capable of enabling the body to return to a state of balance. It seems that turmeric may well be such and, i reasoned, if it can do it for a mouse then maybe it can for me.

So, for about a month, myself and my anxiety prone wife have been eschewin the questionable tablets in favor of the real thing.

We both noticed a decline in her anxiety within three days. She quit waking up worrying about the problems du jour. Her startle response became reasonable. Frustration no longer was able to take hold. She even has stopped cussing the computer! No depression (long a part of her life). But no anti-depressent druggo effect whatsoever.

For myself, I experienced a dramatic turnaround in my symptoms which I initially attributed to manipulation of my diet which I happened to begin at the same time. Now I am not so sure. Although the insulin-glucose interaction is governed by the HPA remember.

All I know is that I have been in better shape over the last four weeks than I have been in several years. I was often forced to cut my day short and return home by noon, barely able to get in the house. Two days ago I put in a ten hour day and shrugged it off! Not only have my symptoms changed greatly, but I have a growing sense of being overmedicated! I intend to start playing with my dosage and spacing to see, but the change is indisputable. And it feels like it is continuing.


1: Brain Res. 2006 Oct 2; [Epub ahead of print]

Curcumin reverses the effects of chronic stress on behavior, the HPA axis, BDNF
expression and phosphorylation of CREB.

Xu Y, Ku B, Tie L, Yao H, Jiang W, Ma X, Li X.

Department of Pharmacology, School of Basic Medical Science, Peking University,
38 Xueyuan Road, Beijing, 100083, PR China.

Curcuma longa is a major constituent of the traditional Chinese medicine
Xiaoyao-san, which has been used to effectively manage stress and
depression-related disorders in China. Curcumin is the active component of
curcuma longa, and its antidepressant effects were described in our prior
studies in mouse models of behavioral despair. We hypothesized that curcumin may
also alleviate stress-induced depressive-like behaviors and
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysfunction. Thus in present study we
assessed whether curcumin treatment (2.5, 5 and 10 mg/kg, p.o.) affects behavior
in a chronic unpredictable stress model of depression in rats and examined what
its molecular targets may be. We found that subjecting animals to the chronic
stress protocol for 20days resulted in performance deficits in the shuttle-box
task and several physiological effects, such as an abnormal adrenal gland weight
to body weight (AG/B) ratio and increased thickness of the adrenal cortex as
well as elevated serum corticosterone levels and reduced glucocorticoid receptor
(GR) mRNA expression. These changes were reversed by chronic curcumin
administration (5 or 10 mg/kg, p.o.). In addition, we also found that the
chronic stress procedure induced a down-regulation of brain-derived neurotrophic
factor (BDNF) protein levels and reduced the ratio of phosphorylated cAMP
response element-binding protein (pCREB) to CREB levels (pCREB/CREB) in the
hippocampus and frontal cortex of stressed rats. Furthermore, these
stress-induced decreases in BDNF and pCREB/CREB were also blocked by chronic
curcumin administration (5 or 10 mg/kg, p.o.). These results provide compelling
evidence that the behavioral effects of curcumin in chronically stressed
animals, and by extension humans, may be related to their modulating effects on
the HPA axis and neurotrophin factor expressions.

PMID: 17022948 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

and one more


1: Biol Pharm Bull. 2006 May;29(5):938-44.

Ethanolic extracts from Curcuma longa attenuates behavioral, immune, and
neuroendocrine alterations in a rat chronic mild stress model.

Xia X, Pan Y, Zhang WY, Cheng G, Kong LD.

State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Immunobiological
Laboratory, Nanjing University, PR China.

The ethanolic extracts from the rhizome of Curcuma longa L. (turmeric),
possesses a wide variety of biological activities related to the treatment and
prevention of affective disorders. To study their antidepressant effects, the
impacts of chronic mild stress (CMS) and of the subsequent administration of
ethanolic extracts of C. longa were investigated. Male Sprague-Dawley rats
subjected to the CMS procedure demonstrated increased serum interleukin-6 and
tumor necrosis factor-alpha levels, as well as a reduction of natural killer
cell activity in splenocytes. In addition, CMS-treated rats exhibited elevated
corticotropin-releasing factor in serum and medulla oblongata and cortisol
levels in serum, with no significant change in serum adrenocorticotropin hormone
levels. The preferential behavior of reduction in sucrose intake was also
observed. These findings indicate that the alterations in immune and
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis systems could participate in the
behavioral response to the CMS procedure in animals. Administration of ethanolic
extracts of C. longa largely reversed the above effects. These results
demonstrate the antidepressant-like activity of ethanolic extracts of C. longa
in the rat CMS model of depression, at least in part by improving the
abnormalities in immune and the HPA axis functions.

PMID: 16651723 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]