Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Could Curcumin Be Beneficial In Pancreatic Cancer?
There are few more dreaded diagnoses than cancer of the pancreas. Although some people actually survive pancreatic adenocarcinoma, and there are things you can do to increase your chances of being a survivor of pancreatic cancer, many patients and their doctors treat the diagnosis as if were a death sentence.
It doesn't have to be.
If you are the patient, no single medical intervention and no single holistic health practice is likely to save your life, but small efforts add up. Each and every doctor-directed treatment and each and every change in diet, addition to natural therapy, or nutritional supplement just might be the one intervention that makes remission possible.
Curcumin, the versatile and potent antioxidant extracted from the orange-yellow curry spice turmeric, is a nutritional supplement that may help in advanced pancreatic cancer. A daily dose of 8,000 mg of curcumin has been tried for up to two months. Two months, as you may know, is a very long time to be treating the condition in an advanced stage. And this result in people is completely consistent with the results of investigations in the laboratory.
Scientists at the University of Texas at El Paso have found that the compound "untangles" DNA that may have been distorted in a precancerous cell. And researchers at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom discovered that tetrahydrocurcuminoids "recharge" the outer membranes of pancreatic cells so that they can attract the regulatory hormones, amino acids, and glucose they need to move into the cell so it can stay healthy.
You can't go "completely natural" and get enough curcumin to do you any good. The only way to get enough of this antioxidant to have an effect on cancer is to take a supplement. You should not take it without letting your doctor know first, and it is not advised if you take any kind of blood thinning agent or agent to stimulate the production of white or red blood cells.
No comments:
Post a Comment