Hi Ron,

I know you are a great proponent of curcumin, and rightly so. I DO think it has promise, but I also think that it is right that the way data, ALL data, is taken and scrutinized, not just accepted because our world will take anything and everything and make claims for it in order to create an expensive market.

The links you have posted offer a good start point for scrutiny so that individually we can make some sense of things - thank you so much for adding them. It makes it a good discussion!

The way this thread came about, and Girija's clarification of the issue show how easy it is for distortions in understanding to appear, and one of my reasons for posting in the way I have is that there is a certain 'exoticising' aspect to supplements and alternative therapies, in a way as a result of the lack of transparency and ethics in allopathic treatments. Exotic supplement good, pharmaceutical bad. Woolly thinking....

Curcumin deserves to be studied deeper, and while that is happening, at least it has been trialed by many people for a very long time! It is the figures and justifications that I worry about......

Given it's antiseptic qualities I have wondered whether the neuro-protection it is claimed it offers might come from it acting on the causes of inflammation that Rick discusses. I have certainly heard of it being used in rural situations as a wash for use on the umbilical stump on the navel of newborns, on nose and ear piercings, as well as on other wounds in dressings, and of thread boiled in water to which turmeric has been added being used as emergency sutures. In all these situations as a normal and effective procedure.


Lindy