So I live in the EU where such supplements are supposedly safe. Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous. And the dose that was dangerous to the woman was 2000mg.
I looked on my table toward the bottle of turmeric my parents gifted me recently, saying they heard it was good and bought on a famous "health" store.
Bottle is: turmeric + pepper "designed for max absorption" and dose is 10000mg.
> Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous.
The article made it up. It's pure speculation. Hundreds of thousands of people take pepper+curcumin supplements and are totally fine.
What's likely the culprit here is an idiosyncratic immune response, or a heavy metal contaminated supplement. Of course, that's also speculative. Could be something she ate; could be that she didn't disclose a drinking problem.
The article reads like it has an axe to grind, tbh. "Oh no an unregulated racket!"
From the linked NIH page on drug-induced liver toxicity:
“Importantly, means of increasing the bioavailability of curcumin were developed using piperine (black pepper) or lipid nanoparticle delivery methods to increase absorption. These high bioavailability forms of purified curcumin were subsequently linked to several cases of liver injury and mentioned as a possible cause of outbreaks of acute hepatitis with jaundice in Italy.”
That sounds crazy, are you sure you didn't misread the labeling?
When I checked the turmeric supplement I use. Which I buy in a reputable health food, and supplement chain in Norway.
It is 40mg of turmeric, which according to the article is well under the acceptable daily dose.
As far as I understand Norway follows the EU directives on this, but has some additional strictures as well. I wouldn't expect the difference to be this stark though.
Btw. the reason I use turmeric supplements is that I have a tendency to get persistent inflammation, and for me, the supplements seems to help with that. But if I didn't have this problem, I would not take it, and also, it isn't given that it works for you, even if it does for me.
Secondarily, both contains oxalate in proportions of 1% of black pepper and 2% of turmeric by mass, which leads to the formation of kidney stones.
It's worse in the US because the FDA effectively "washes its hands" of anything deemed a "supplement". In general, the precautionary principle is difficult to find in America outside of FDA-approved procedures, medical devices, and medications. Food and supplements are desperately under-regulated.
> "The act was intended to exempt the dietary and herbal supplement industry from most FDA drug regulations, allowing them to be sold and marketed without scientific backing for their health and medical claims.[3]"
IIR, the FDA is legally forbidden from touching "supplements" - thanks to Congress, and the small army of supplement-industry lobbyists who tell Congress exactly what the law should say.
one, it's extremely likely that the article is incomplete and lack critical info like a presence of lead, or genetic predisposition.
Two: 10g is crazy. That's how you get kidney stones. Put so curcuma and black pepper in your meals. In EU, supplements (and recently, tea) are tested for heavy metal and plastic, and to see if the ingredient list is correct, but their effectiveness is not.
Are you talking about pills? Pills generally can only contain about 1000mg or a little more. Is the bottle suggesting you take 10 pills for a single dose?
I was working at a small farm-shop at some point, we sold smoothies of turmeric and ginger, we had to label it clearly, and restrict sale for pregnant woman, young kids and the elderly because large doses can be dangerous. As far as I recall both are a natural blood thinner.
Why would supplements supposedly be safe in the EU? They are not regulated as far as I know? They can be sold anywhere. They often contain all kinds of inflated claims..
Not sure why this is downvoted, it's exactly correct. Supplements are entirely unregulated, and actually often not even sold as food/medicine "officially", but labeled as "collectible item". Light drugs are often sold this way too (kratom, HHC weed, etc).
Yeah. Isn't there a thing called water poisoning? Where your body sheds lots of things that it needs if you drink too much water? I'd wager a guess that if you drink >20 liters of water daily you'll be in some trouble...
People will pay all kinds of money for supplements which have been denatured from their source (and therefore not as likely to be effective) instead of just eating fruits and vegetables.
If a synthetic food additive were that hazardous at that small a multiple of the amounts used in food, it'd have been banned. This (curcumin) is an exemplar of that pervasive magical thinking in modern society, the naturalistic fallacy: the prior that there's some inherent qualitative difference between the class of things occurring naturally and the technological/synthetic.
It's perfectly legal to dye food yellow with turmeric.
Many synthetic dyes are illegal for food, dyes which (unlike turmeric) have never been shown to have caused actual harm. But which (like turmeric) are known to be toxic at some dose not used in any food product, some 10x or 100x or whatever high multiple.
Curcumin is known to be pharmacologically active; has lots of (poorly understood) biochemical effects, hits lots of targets. It's never been demonstrated to be medically useful. The unjustified assumption—the magical thinking—is that, being a natural plant substance, maybe some of these random effects, randomly twiddling with the biochemistry of a human body without understanding what you're doing, might be beneficial—so people deliberately ingest it. That's accepted. It's the opposite with synthetic chemicals: if one's biochemically active in some poorly-understood way, you assume that mystery activity is toxic—not beneficial.
(Tangentially, you should probably avoid turmeric regardless of any of this, because the modern supply chain is contaminated with heavy metals, which cause poisonings[0]).
It's exceptionally sensible in the context where hundreds of millions of children worldwide are clinically lead-poisoned, and contaminated turmeric is one of the leading causes of that.
I believe you are referring to Ayurvedic Medications mostly in India but the practice has spread to other regions. People that use Ayurvedic supplements have been doing so for thousands of years out of beliefs that heavy metals heal the body. Never use supplements someone made and distributed in zip-lock bags.
I personally will stick with supplements made by the same laboratories that make prescription drugs and get tested for heavy metals which are most of the popular supplements found on Amazon. The tests are labelled on the bottles.
That's a manageable risk if you buy from the small handful of reputable companies that do heavy metal testing like Life Extension or Natural Factors, who publish their COAs and have brand equity to protect.
The less manageable risk is the liver issue. The HLA-B*35:01 gene significantly increases the probability of it happening, and this gene can be screened for in theory. Periodic liver testing might be another way to manage the risk, to catch it before it's symptomatic.
Unless you buy on Amazon, in which case products from reputable brands are co-mingled with third-party FBA sellers' inventory, which may include counterfeits.
> According to the World Health Organization, an acceptable daily dose is up to 3 mg per kilogram of weight per day—for a 150-pound (68 kg) adult, that would be about 204 mg per day. Mohan was taking more than 10 times that amount
I think it's extremely likely that the majority of people in India and surrounding countries - so, hundreds of millions of people - far exceeds the WHO recommendation every day, and frequently eat as much as this woman did, in foods that also contain black pepper. I googled to make sure, and the top five or so links all said that Indians eat an average of 2-2.5g of turmeric per day.
So perhaps the issue was something else? For example:
- contamination
- taking it on an empty stomach rather than with food
I carefully read the article before commenting to check in case it was actually curcumin.
They clearly call it turmeric supplements, not curcumin, throughout the article. The main source given is this NBC article, which also clearly calls it turmeric supplements, not curcumin:
The 3mg per kg per day is of curcumin not turmeric itself. Looking up the content of curcumin in turmeric powder it seems to average around ~1-2% so 2-2.5g of turmeric per day would be 25-50mg of curcumin.
Readit News
I looked on my table toward the bottle of turmeric my parents gifted me recently, saying they heard it was good and bought on a famous "health" store.
Bottle is: turmeric + pepper "designed for max absorption" and dose is 10000mg.
The article made it up. It's pure speculation. Hundreds of thousands of people take pepper+curcumin supplements and are totally fine.
What's likely the culprit here is an idiosyncratic immune response, or a heavy metal contaminated supplement. Of course, that's also speculative. Could be something she ate; could be that she didn't disclose a drinking problem.
The article reads like it has an axe to grind, tbh. "Oh no an unregulated racket!"
“Importantly, means of increasing the bioavailability of curcumin were developed using piperine (black pepper) or lipid nanoparticle delivery methods to increase absorption. These high bioavailability forms of purified curcumin were subsequently linked to several cases of liver injury and mentioned as a possible cause of outbreaks of acute hepatitis with jaundice in Italy.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548561/
So no, the article didn’t make it up. In fact, you made up the claim that they made it up. Seems like you are the one with an axe to grind.
When I checked the turmeric supplement I use. Which I buy in a reputable health food, and supplement chain in Norway. It is 40mg of turmeric, which according to the article is well under the acceptable daily dose. As far as I understand Norway follows the EU directives on this, but has some additional strictures as well. I wouldn't expect the difference to be this stark though.
Btw. the reason I use turmeric supplements is that I have a tendency to get persistent inflammation, and for me, the supplements seems to help with that. But if I didn't have this problem, I would not take it, and also, it isn't given that it works for you, even if it does for me.
It's worse in the US because the FDA effectively "washes its hands" of anything deemed a "supplement". In general, the precautionary principle is difficult to find in America outside of FDA-approved procedures, medical devices, and medications. Food and supplements are desperately under-regulated.
The "natural" supplement industry lobbied for, and obtained, a law that makes them unregulatable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_... ("Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994")
> "The act was intended to exempt the dietary and herbal supplement industry from most FDA drug regulations, allowing them to be sold and marketed without scientific backing for their health and medical claims.[3]"
one, it's extremely likely that the article is incomplete and lack critical info like a presence of lead, or genetic predisposition.
Two: 10g is crazy. That's how you get kidney stones. Put so curcuma and black pepper in your meals. In EU, supplements (and recently, tea) are tested for heavy metal and plastic, and to see if the ingredient list is correct, but their effectiveness is not.
Deleted Comment
Edit: in europe
I heard it is good, not trusting generic "healthy wonder medicines" in general.
I think I'd rather mine in Chicken Korma than some pill.
https://peixeverde.pt/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/curcumega-8...
Pretty sure that is a mg, not an μg
Deleted Comment
Yeah. Isn't there a thing called water poisoning? Where your body sheds lots of things that it needs if you drink too much water? I'd wager a guess that if you drink >20 liters of water daily you'll be in some trouble...
Weasel words included because they're necessary... Health is complicated
It's perfectly legal to dye food yellow with turmeric.
Many synthetic dyes are illegal for food, dyes which (unlike turmeric) have never been shown to have caused actual harm. But which (like turmeric) are known to be toxic at some dose not used in any food product, some 10x or 100x or whatever high multiple.
Curcumin is known to be pharmacologically active; has lots of (poorly understood) biochemical effects, hits lots of targets. It's never been demonstrated to be medically useful. The unjustified assumption—the magical thinking—is that, being a natural plant substance, maybe some of these random effects, randomly twiddling with the biochemistry of a human body without understanding what you're doing, might be beneficial—so people deliberately ingest it. That's accepted. It's the opposite with synthetic chemicals: if one's biochemically active in some poorly-understood way, you assume that mystery activity is toxic—not beneficial.
(Tangentially, you should probably avoid turmeric regardless of any of this, because the modern supply chain is contaminated with heavy metals, which cause poisonings[0]).
[0] https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ("Your Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead")
That doesn't make sense in any context.
Are you a bot?
It's exceptionally sensible in the context where hundreds of millions of children worldwide are clinically lead-poisoned, and contaminated turmeric is one of the leading causes of that.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/09/23/nx-s1...
> "Are you a bot?"
Kindly read the forum rules.
I personally will stick with supplements made by the same laboratories that make prescription drugs and get tested for heavy metals which are most of the popular supplements found on Amazon. The tests are labelled on the bottles.
The less manageable risk is the liver issue. The HLA-B*35:01 gene significantly increases the probability of it happening, and this gene can be screened for in theory. Periodic liver testing might be another way to manage the risk, to catch it before it's symptomatic.
I think it's extremely likely that the majority of people in India and surrounding countries - so, hundreds of millions of people - far exceeds the WHO recommendation every day, and frequently eat as much as this woman did, in foods that also contain black pepper. I googled to make sure, and the top five or so links all said that Indians eat an average of 2-2.5g of turmeric per day.
So perhaps the issue was something else? For example:
- contamination
- taking it on an empty stomach rather than with food
- genetics
- liver damage from something else entirely
(To be fair, the Ars Technica article fails the reader by failing to use precise language, inviting dangerous misunderstandings).
They clearly call it turmeric supplements, not curcumin, throughout the article. The main source given is this NBC article, which also clearly calls it turmeric supplements, not curcumin:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/liver-damage-turm...
So why do you think it's actually curcumin?
Well, turmeric certainly has a history of “contamination”[1].
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/09/23/nx-s1...