Inflammation is incredibly important. It helps the body fight foreign invaders and also has a role in repairing damage. Without inflammation, pathogens like bacteria could easily take over our bodies and kill us.
However, chronic (long-term) inflammation is at the root of many dis-eases, and can be inappropriately deployed against the body’s own tissues.
It is now believed that chronic, low-level inflammation plays a major role in almost every chronic, Western disease. This includes heart disease, cancer, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s and various degenerative conditions (4, 5, 6).
Therefore, anything that can help fight chronic inflammation is of potential importance in preventing and even treating these diseases. It turns out that curcumin is strongly anti-inflammatory, it is so powerful that it matches the effectiveness of some anti-inflammatory drugs (7).
Curcumin actually targets multiple steps in the inflammatory pathway, at the molecular level.
Curcumin blocks NF-kB, a molecule that travels into the nuclei of cells and turns on genes related to inflammation. NF-kB is believed to play a major role in many chronic diseases (8, 9).
Without getting into the gory details (inflammation is extremely complicated), the key takeaway here is that curcumin is a bioactive substance that fights inflammation at the molecular level (10, 11, 12).
In several studies, its potency has compared favorably to anti-inflammatory pharmaceutical drugs… except without the side effects (13, 14).
Additional studies on Curcument, Turmeric and Inflammation:
- Anti-inflammatory properties of curcumin, a major constituent of Curcuma longa: a review of preclinical and clinical research
- Biological activities of Curcuma longa L.
- Curcumin: the Indian solid gold
- Pharmacological basis for the role of curcumin in chronic diseases: an age-old spice with modern targets
- The targets of curcumin
- Curcuma as a functional food in the control of cancer and inflammation
- Curcumin-from a “traditional” spice and food coloring to a “modern” biological regulator
- Comparative Efficacy of Topical Curcumin and Triamcinolone for Oral Lichen Planus: A Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trial
