Name: Turmeric Curcumin and Colon Cancer
Uploaded: 2022-05-16T11:28:55.000Z
Duration: 4 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The low incidence of large and  small bowel cancer in India

is often attributed to natural antioxidants,  such as curcumin in the diet,

the yellow pigment in the spice turmeric,  which is used in curry powder.

However, it is imperative to recall that  beneficial effects attributed to diets

are seldom reproduced by administration  of a single ingredient in that diet.

For example, diets rich in beta-carotene  lower the risk of tobacco-related cancers,

but the administration of  beta-carotene pills does not.

That doesn't stop researchers  from trying, though.

Back in 2001, in a last ditch attempt  to save the lives of 15 patients

with advanced colorectal  cancer that didn't respond

to any of the standard chemotherapy  agents or radiation,

they started them  on a turmeric extract.

It appeared to help stall the disease  in a third of the patients, 5 out of 15,

suggesting turmeric extract may cause clinical  benefit in at least some patients

with advanced refractory  colorectal cancer.

Now, if we were talking  about some new kind of chemo,

you'd have to weigh that against  chemo side effects,

losing your hair, sloughing of your gut,  intractable vomiting, maybe being bed-ridden.

So in a drug scenario,  a one in three benefit

but when we're talking about a plant  extract shown to be remarkably safe,

even if it just helped 1 in a 100,  it would be worth considering.

With no serious downsides,  a one in three benefit

for end-stage cancer  is pretty exciting.

To see if colon cancer could be  prevented, five years later,

researchers at Cleveland Clinic  and Hopkins tested two phytochemicals,

curcumin (from turmeric) and  quercitin (found in red onions and red wine),

in people with familial  adenomatous polyposis.

and there's this disease  that runs in families

in which you develop  hundreds of polyps,

unless you have your colon  prophylactically removed.

So they took five such patients who  already had their colons removed,

but still either had their rectum  or a little intestinal pouch,

This is where they started out,  between 5 and 45 polyps each,

and this is where they  ended up after six months

On average, they ended up with  fewer than half the polyps,

and the ones that they  had left, shrunk in half.

Here's a representative endoscopic  photograph before-and-after.

Got rid of all their  polyps by month three,

and it turned out the patient  stopped taking the supplements.

So they put them back on the phytonutrient  supplements for another three months,

all with virtually no adverse events  and no blood test abnormalities.

By studying people at high  risk for colon cancer

there were able to show noticeable  effects within just months.

they were only able to recruit  five people for the study.

Another five years later, researchers  put 44 smokers on turmeric/curcumin  supplements alone,

for a month and measured changes in  their colorectal aberrant crypt foci,

which may act like  precursors to polyps,

And we can see just after one month  there was a significant drop

in the number of these  abnormal crypt foci

but no change in the low dose group,  with no dose-limiting side effects,

although the stools in the  participants did turn yellow.