Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits? • Hacker News Board

Re: Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?

#11

Post by mgh2 » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

thorum wrote: post #9

Somewhat useless article. To summarize, we have anecdotes suggesting they may work but no one has figured out how to prove or disprove it in a study, and the author has some doubts. Meanwhile supplements can be dangerous if you take too much or have a liver condition, or if you buy them from an unreputable source, as with every other substance on earth. Author confirms it tastes good in milk.

Not useless if it pinpointed that most of the foundational research papers that initiated this trend were of dubious intellectual integrity- i.e. the source was compromised

Re: Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?

#12

Post by jml7c5 » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

DANmode wrote: post #10

Daishiman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?

#13

Post by DANmode » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 10:15 PM UTC

jml7c5 wrote: post #12

DANmode wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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The problem is, you’re out of date regarding the recent efforts put into studying and documenting long-known herbs.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.

Re: Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?

#14

Post by calmbonsai » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #8

anon291 wrote: post #7

If turmeric had health benefits, we would expect India to be the world leader in that particular benefit. There are so few areas in which India is a leader that the answer is obviously no. Like I get that turmeric is exotic and that a lot of non-Indians take turmeric pills and supplements, but Indian food has tons of turmeric as a normal ingredient. We would go through bottles and bags of the stuff like nothing. I do…

Like so many things, it may even be backwards: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb...

Like so many of CR's nutrition articles in the past few years, the test methodology and standards applied (see https://article.images.consumerreports.org/prod/content/dam/... and https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7509468/ ) are flawed and the conclusions are overblown.

Re: Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?

#15

Post by blargey » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 11:08 PM UTC

anon291 wrote: post #7

If turmeric had health benefits, we would expect India to be the world leader in that particular benefit. There are so few areas in which India is a leader that the answer is obviously no. Like I get that turmeric is exotic and that a lot of non-Indians take turmeric pills and supplements, but Indian food has tons of turmeric as a normal ingredient. We would go through bottles and bags of the stuff like nothing. I do…

Culinary turmeric is about ~3% curcuminoids by weight (and only 60-70% of that is curcumin specifically). Curcumin also has low oral bioavailability, typically offset by taking a large dose (1000mg) and combining with piperine - even ignoring the piperine, that 1g of curcumin amounts of 66g of turmeric.

The average Indian household does not use 60g of turmeric per person per day. More like 1.5-2g per person per day, or ~30mg of curcumin, and without much to improve absorption.

Curcumin can, in fact, interact with anticoagulants and affect iron absorption at high supplemental doses, which is not a concern at culinary amounts.

There are reasons to be skeptical of the clinical evidence for curcumin supplementation, but "the heterogenous population of India isn't experiencing widespread miracle cures from culinary turmeric" is not one of them.

(And yes, garlic extract is also a thing, also extremely concentrated compared to eating whole garlics or seasoning with garlic powder, and has antiplatelet/anticoagulant activity that one should be aware of before taking such supplements)

Re: Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?

#16

Post by cyanydeez » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

calmbonsai wrote: post #14

cyanydeez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like so many things, it may even be backwards: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb...

Like so many of CR's nutrition articles in the past few years, the test methodology and standards applied (see https://article.images.consumerreports.org/prod/content/dam/... and https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7509468/ ) are flawed and the conclusions are overblown.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7045a4.htm but not done for no reason

Re: Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?

#17

Post by atombender » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 11:38 PM UTC

DANmode wrote: post #13

jml7c5 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/PM…

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/

Re: Do turmeric and curcumin have any actual health benefits?

#18

Post by DANmode » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 11:47 PM UTC

atombender wrote: post #17

DANmode wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/PM…

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. R…