Turmeric and cancer

Cancer can be a really difficult disease to fight using conventional methods. The cells in your body are in a state of flux. They are constantly dieing-off (senescence) and being replaced with new cells. The body needs to replace with new cells though only those that have been lost through cell death. Sometimes though that is not what happens.

Cancer cells are cells that have a faulty mechanism for turning themselves off. Both the replacement of healthy cells that have specific functions with cancer cells that do not perform those functions and the physical presence of the cancer mass have an impact on the body's functions such that death can occur if the cancerous mass is not removed either through surgery (not all cancers can be removed physically) or with chemical (chemo) therapy and/or radiation. Often a combination of these approaches are used.

Unfortunately not all cancers can be fought off in this way. Some are resistant (have faulty apoptotic pathways) and can even lead to increased malignancy with treatment over time. This tendency can either be inherent in the cancer type (shows no response to chemo/radiation therapy) or be acquired over time (initial response that is later lost.) But recent work on shows there may be some hope for future treatments on these resistant cancers.

There is a process of cell death termed mitotic catastrophe which in mammalian cells is caused by aberrant mitosis. This is sciencese for death of cells by dividing into various other (non-viable) forms. A mitotic catastrophe causes massive die-off of the affected cells. This process is generally prevented from occuring in cells due to a body chemical given the name of survivin (how creative! I guess that's better than zercoxinol or something like that.). It turns out survivn is found in all growing cell locations but not in mature tissue. Here is where things get interesting...

Turns out there is a way to interfere with survivin (remember servivin helps keep cancer cells alive by preventing mitotic catastrophe) and it is derived from turmeric.

From wikipedia:

Turmeric (Curcuma longa, also called tumeric or kunyit in some Asian countries) is a spice commonly used in curries and other South Asian cuisine.

An active ingredient in turmeric is a compound called curcumin. In a recent article in the journal International Journal of Cancer (Volume 119, Issue 8, Pages 1811-1818 23 May 2006) titled Resistance to apoptosis of HCW-2 cells can be overcome by curcumin- or vincristine-induced mitotic catastrophe Magalska et al state:

It has been very recently shown that curcumin (diferuloylmethane), a natural dye from the rhizome of Curcuma longa [turmeric] and a known apoptotic inducer, downregulates survivin. In other experiments, it has been shown that curcumin arrests MCF-7 cells in G2/M, disrupts mitotic spindle structure and induces micronucleation in MCF-7 breast cancer,[9] displaying cell morphology that fits very well to the mitotic catastrophe picture.

Well there is a lot of sciencese but the short of it is that this compound in turmeric may well play a future role in cancer suppression. This of course does not mean that you should expect that eating this turmeric will prevent cancer or help you if you have it. The body is far too complex a system to jump to that conclusion.

I will write more later about turmeric and a role it might have in helping older people keep mental acuity.

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