Any brands of turmeric in tablet form without heavy metal contamination?

[rd5555]

I want to start taking turmeric again, but i've just been reading about all the heavy metal contamination.

Does anyone know any brands of turmeric supplements in tablet form, that are free of heavy metals?

I hate the taste of turmeric so i'll need to have it in tablet form

thank you

 

 

[UnbornTao]

Could you share the source where it says turmeric contains heavy metals?

[rd5555]

@UnbornTao just google 'turmeric heavy metals', there's loads of pages on it.

and then when i do the inverse and search for heavy metal free turmeric, i'm unable to find anything

[Michael569]

Most of these products is a turmeric powder that you would use in kitchen stuffed in a capsule l, marked up at + 300% and close to 99% unabsorbable by the human intestines. Not to mention that if there is indeed a contamination risk, that's how you expose yourself in high levels.

If you are concerned rather buy organic turmeric powder and use small quantities in cooking. The combined effect of heating and mixing with oils and other polyphenols from your other ingredients may, in the net total, give you a higher yield of absorbed curcumin than some overpriced capsule would which is an equivalent to supplementing chalk.

Or just avoid it altogether

[rd5555]

@Michael569 thanks Michael, yeah I've heard how little curcumin we absorb from turmeric actually.

Out of interest, do you take any other supplements / eat any foods that help to protect against alzheimers?

 

 

[Michael569]

34 minutes ago, rd5555 said:

Out of interest, do you take any other supplements / eat any foods that help to protect against alzheimers?

Other than 2000IU vitamin D during Autumn & Winter and B12 drops a few times a week, not so much anymore. I'll do an occasional round of Algae Oil and a teaspoon of Hempseed oil in my morning tea but other than that I've dropped all supplements at this point. 

I think keeping your vit D at the higher levels can go a long way for neurodegenerative disease risk mitigation and the effect on B12 deficiency on myelin sheath destruction is also well documented. 

Still, I would say, the biggest one is your genetics, your diet as a whole, sleep quality, lifestyle and potentially toxin prevention. I wrote an entire article on my blog about lifestyle approach to minimising neurodegenerative disease risk, maybe that'll be interesting for you 

For me, personally sleep is the biggest factor. When I get bad sleep, I feel like I am significantly dumber the next day until I can restore it again. 

Edited February 13, 2023 by Michael569

[rd5555]

thank you will check it out! Interesting about the 2000IU Vitamin D, I was reading recently from many sources saying to limit to 600IU a day for vitamin D, have you heard anything on that?

[Michael569]

12 hours ago, rd5555 said:

hank you will check it out! Interesting about the 2000IU Vitamin D, I was reading recently from many sources saying to limit to 600IU a day for vitamin D, have you heard anything on that?

Yah 600 IU is a standard dose for maintenance. if you want to increase your levels tho, you need to go higher. 600 won't move the needle it just prevents it moving down 

[UnbornTao]

@Michael569 if turmeric (curcumin) is hardly absorbed, why would some nutritionists still recommend it and swear by its properties? Is curcumin the main contributor to turmeric's and curry's beneficial effects?

Are dried and powered spices contaminated with heavy metals to on degree or another?

At which point do the potential health risks of consuming healthy foods outweigh the benefits? For example, carrots are presumably contaminated with a certain toxic compound, probably a heavy metal, I hear tell. The ones you buy may not be organic, so what's the deal here? What would you recommend?

[Michael569]

7 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

f turmeric (curcumin) is hardly absorbed, why would some nutritionists still recommend it and swear by its properties? Is curcumin the main contributor to turmeric's and curry's beneficial effects

This is a legit question and I don't know the full scope of the answer. 

A lot of nutritionists/functional medicine docs, naturopaths and holistic practitioners recommend supplements based on hearsay or quick google search.

It is rare for health professionals to review the evidence of efficacy before making product recommendations like these because let's face it, it is boring and most don't know how to do that.

That's generally one of the reasons why some nutritionists keep recommending crap like adrenal formulas or collagen powders because they never bothered to check. That and the fact that many take commissions for prescribing supplements which is a disgusting practice that the Industry has become corrupted with. And so the entire industry is being pulled down by rotten apples (you can see that this is a personal grudge I hold :D) 

When it comes to absorption o curcumin, the clinical trials that show the benefits of curcumin are usually accounted for by either increasing the supplemental dose or frequency of dosing. Even at the low absorption rate, curcumin does appear to have potential benefits, which makes it an attractive supplement so the conquest is now all about absorption. 

I think using it as a culinary ingredient combined with oils and heat processing as well as other spices (such as black pepper which may improve its absorption by manipulating CYP45 enzyme family) is probably increasing the absorption, but I have no way of measuring it. It also teaches people to think about food functionally, and the whole "food is medicine" perspective rather than endlessly popping pills which is a behaviour where we reject ownership for our health and rely on gimmicks. 

7 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Are dried and powered spices contaminated with heavy metals to on degree or another?

Possibly. It depends on where they were grown, how they have treated post harvesting etc. Anything can be contaminated nowadays. 

But let's entertain the idea they are. Still, it appears when these are used in culinary doses, they exert beneficial effects. People who eat more of this stuff, including many vegetables and fruits that are suspected to be (statistically speaking) more likely to be contaminated, still get health benefits compared to those who don't eat them or eat less of them.

Not to mention that spices make healthy food taste better and so we can eat more of it - again pros vs cons tradeoff.

The question also is "what are we going to eat instead once we start eliminating?" If we start eliminating plants, herbs, and veggies then people will start doing all sorts of crazy stuff like powders, meal replacements and processed junk  that rarely results in anything other than disordered eating and unnecessary phobia causing more mental damage than any tiny particles of lead or mercury ever could hope to.

Ever seen what some of those insta influencers eat?  I get blown away but how popular they get considering all they eat are protein powders and processed junk. 

7 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

At which point do the potential health risks of consuming healthy foods outweigh the benefits? For example, carrots are presumably contaminated with a certain toxic compound, probably a heavy metal, I hear tell. The ones you buy may not be organic, so what's the deal here? What would you recommend?

I'll give you a different perspective on this, maybe it will help. 

For some foods, we have a pretty good certainty that they are bad. For example, processed meat like sausages and hot dogs is one of those. As low as 100-150 grams per week (equivalent to one medium hot dog a week) already seems to increase the risk of bowel cancer. For such foods, we can confidently say, the negatives outweigh the positives quite dramatically. Animal fats like tallow, goose fat, pig fat etc also belong into this category where less is better than more. 

For other foods like unprocessed red meat, there appears to be a dose-dependent curve. A little bit (about 80g/day) is conditionally safe, but above that, the relative risk goes up. This is because the negative effects of this food might not have anything to do with total calories and more to do with ApoB binding in the arteries and risk of early onset of atherosclerosis. 

High-fat dairy (butter, whole milk, ghee, high fat cheddar) is also one of those where less is better than more due to breast & prostate cancer risk. 

With everything else, there is harm ONLY where those foods are overeaten and lead to weight gain (sugar, sugar drinks, oils ) but where calories are accounting for are highly health-promoting (PUFA & MUFA oils) or there is neither harm nor benefit (lean meat, low-fat dairy) or there is just pure benefit (veggies, fruits, berries, legumes, soy products, whole grains, nuts, seeds). 

The problem is that once we start eliminating foods that are clearly beneficial like vegetables in fear of some possible (often unlikely) risk we either need to replace them with something else or our diet loses diversity and that will have a negative knock-on effect. We cannot just endlessly eliminate foods without restoring the caloric values from somewhere else. 

A lot of people end up so confused about everything that they take up intermittent fasting in order to avoid the anxiety of actually eating something, they start cutting meals, using overpriced green powders, overeating on a single food category that is often worse than all other foods combined(e.g. carnivore diet) or just go into all sorts of crazy ass ways. Many end up gut problems and mental health problems the moment they want to go back because they've devasted their microbiome colonies, their colon harboured since birth and with these good colonies gone, they get replaced by pathogenic proteolytic species overpopulated during steak, butter & organ diets. For a lot of these people, there might not be a cure anymore because we cannot repopulate gut once it is all gone. 

So just each time you remove something, make sure to put something similar back. Don't just remove it because someone told you so. Do the research and find out for yourself. If carrots are so bad for us, why do people who have higher circulator levels of beta-carotene have less cancer? Why do men who eat more carrots have less prostate cancer? 

These are the types of questions proponents of food phobia need to answer before we will begin listening to them. 

Sorry for the long rant, hopefully this will help to draw a perspective

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Michael569

[UnbornTao]

@Michael569 Nice man, Jesus Christ, thanks for the long answer.  

Just added carrots to a vegetable stir fry

Edited February 17, 2023 by UnbornTao

[Michael569]

10 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

ust added carrots to a vegetable stir fry  

I remembered reading this during my deep dive into prostate cancer some time ago and now got curious about the magnitude of the results. This is what the meta-analysis has shown: 

We found a significantly decreased risk of prostate cancer associated with the intake of carrots (odds ratio 0.82, 95% CI 0.70-0.97). In addition, the dose-response meta-analysis indicated that for each serving per week, or 10 g per day increment of carrot intake, the risk estimate of prostate cancer was 0.95 (0.90-0.99) or 0.96 (0.94-0.99).

So basically, for each 10 grams per day (equals to 1 large bite of carrot) the odds of being diagnosed with prostate cancer go down by 4% (mind you this is not the same as "risk") . And for those who eat the most carrots compared to those who eat none (numbers are not clear here), there is an extra 18% reduction in odds ratio.

Now, honestly, I don't know to what degree I buy these results. They use the Odds Ratio, which is less interesting than Risk Ratio; there is probably a limited sample of studies and I bet there are plenty uf uncontrolled variables there too. It probably also depends on whether they are raw or cooked, as cooking liberates more beta carotene from the plant walls. 

But still!! 

In a nutshell, "eat those fucking carrots"  Maybe if they are indeed contaminated, you only need like one per day and not a juice made out of 20. Maybe that's how you start running into a problem, I'm not sure. The devil is in the details. 

But hopefully, this helps to appreciate that it is not all black & white. 

Edited February 16, 2023 by Michael569

[flowboy]

Fresh turmeric is great, you can combine it with ginger and make a tea out of it.

Just beware that it will paint everything permanently yellow.