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by collyw 13 days ago
I has tennis elbow a while ago. Was going to see the doctor but there was a wait. Looked up natural antiinflamatories. Turmeric came up. Did turmeric and black pepper milkshakes for a week and it fixed it.
4 comments

I hear you. The problem is... It might have just gotten better by itself. Hard to know.
Maybe.
Or the turmeric did nothing and it fixed itself the way the vast majority of injuries heal.
Turmeric always does something.

Whether it’s enough to make a difference in your case depends.

The problem is that this is either unsupported by evidence or a meaninglessly shallow claim. After all, almost every herbal remedy does something, but it doesn't mean it's actually therapeutic for some given condition.
The problem is, you’re out of date regarding the recent efforts put into studying and documenting long-known herbs.

Curcumin is a polyphenol that operates at the molecular level to disrupt multiple inflammatory cascades. It achieves this by simultaneously blocking the transcription of inflammatory genes and interrupting the enzymes responsible for generating pain and swelling.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10111629/

I’ve got a couple other examples I’ve come across recently that I can additionally share.

That paper is co-authored by Bharat B. Aggarwal, who has been found to produce fraudulent research [1], and many of whose papers have been retracted. This is the guy mentioned in the New Scientist article!

Curcumin has been extensively studied, and a common observation is that it is fantastically bioactive in vitro, but tends to have zero meaningful properties when introduced into the biology of a real human being. Researchers have categorized it as an IMPS (invalid metabolic panacea), i.e. a drug whose chemical properties are an illusion, and has ended up becoming a "black hole" for scientific funding [2] [3].

The part about how it "disrupts multiple inflammatory cascades" and so on sounds terrific until you realize these are behaviours observed in vitro. The fact is that curcumin is unstable and highly reactive, so it gets torn apart and neutralized early during digestion, leading to insanely low bioavailability. Tons of compounds are anti-inflammatory in vitro. Very few actually are in the human body.

[1] https://reeserichardson.blog/2024/01/30/the-king-of-curcumin...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26505758/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28074653/

Are you sure that means this particular paper is bad?

Fair point, though. Good news, lots of others:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9881416/#S9

https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemica...

Also curious how many of those detracting have observed the use of capsules,

or the difference in a person not making proper gut acids / liver function.

One problem is: a tennis elbow does not really involve inflammation... Look it up.
I did, it says it sometimes involves inflammation, but it was self diagnosed anyway.Either way I drank turmeric milkshakes and it went away. Maybe by itself, maybe because of the turmeric.
Good thing it did, I've been struggling with it for 9 months now. I'm seeing a new specialist next week.
How long had the problem persisted before you considered going to the doctor?
Probably a bit over a week. Twinged after kayaking at the weekend. Got worse the following weekend and wasn't going away.