@reverett: The BBB might be damaged and some kind of feedback control can occur. But that doesn't mean the right amount of curcumin will enter to protect the neurons effectively. I wonder whether curcumin can cross the BBB in healthy people.

@ronhutton: Though I agree with you that the majority of websites claim curcumin to cross the BBB, still this is not enough to claim curcumin crossing the BBB. I did find several websites claiming curcumin doesn't cross the BBB. The following website claims that curcumin does cross the BBB but not sufficiently enough; which makes sense to why they developed curcumin based meds to cross the BBB:

http://www.nutritionhorizon.com/news...s-Disease.html

Some other interesting sites on curcumin:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2929771/
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/11/57

What makes me doubt about curcumin crossing BBB easily is the fact that some guy on some forum tried to give this to his mother to help her with her starting dementia; but he claimed it didn't work and told the curcumin reports are crap. I read studies about astaxanthin where people were taking this new anti-oxidant orally for 12 weeks. And their memory improved significantly. And I also now astaxanthin does cross the BBB. Curcumin has been shown to have the same effect ... but only in animal studies. So if this guy reports that it didn't work on his mother, than I have the feeling curcumin doesn't cross the BBB easily.