Natural Substances

Protect Your Brain With These Natural Substances

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Several plant compounds have been shown to prevent or treat neurological decline

Your brain is command central for nearly all your body’s normal waking functions.

It’s the most complex organ in the human body, possessing around 100 billion neurons (nerve cells) and more than 100,000 miles of blood vessels. It’s responsible for controlling such functions as walking, talking, thinking, and breathing. Therefore, protecting the brain is a matter of life and breath.

A healthy brain is crucial at any age, but it is particularly important to safeguard when the brain is still forming (up to age 25) and in older adults. If you’re having lapses in memory and attribute it to “senior moments,” the signs of mild cognitive decline (MCD) may already be in effect.

But don’t worry—numerous studies have linked specific natural substances to delaying and even reversing MCD. Read on and learn how to protect your all-important brain with these six naturally neuroprotective substances.

Curcumin

The natural plant compound responsible for turmeric’s bright orange color, curcumin is a powerful antioxidant linked to dozens of beneficial health effects. One purported benefit that has been extensively researched is curcumin’s ability to protect the aging brain, an important effect at any age, especially when symptoms of dementia are present.

A 2012 study published in Ayu on the effects of turmeric on Alzheimer’s disease patients with severe behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia showed that patients “improved remarkably” as a result of consuming 100 milligrams (mg) of curcumin daily for 12 weeks.

Symptoms such as agitation, anxiety, apathy, and urinary incontinence began improving after patients were prescribed turmeric powder capsules, without any adverse reactions noted. After three months of treatment, neuropsychiatric scores showed that symptoms were less acute and the burden on caregivers had lessened. After one year on the turmeric supplement, patients had not experienced a return of prior symptoms of dementia.

Ginsenosides

While you may not be familiar with their name, ginsenosides are potent plant compounds that have been isolated from a plant called Panax, which is widely known for its healthy roots—ginseng. Responsible for the pharmacological effects of ginseng, ginsenosides play a critical role in the body’s inflammatory and disease responses and are featured in a deepening catalog of research that may help prevent and treat inflammatory diseases, including those affecting the brain.

A recent study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology explored the effects of ginsenosides and their probable neuroprotective mechanisms in ischemic strokes, the most common type of stroke. These strokes occur when a blood vessel leading to the brain is obstructed.

After an exhaustive meta-analysis evaluating the effects of ginsenoside-Rb1, researchers concluded that ginsenosides have a potential neuroprotective effect that works through an array of mechanisms, including attenuating brain water content, promoting neurogenesis, reducing cell death, and providing antioxidative, anti-inflammatory effects. G-Rb1 also supplemented energy and enhanced cerebral circulation.

Ginkgo Biloba

Ginkgo biloba has a long history as a natural health aid, with anecdotes describing its use for asthma and bronchitis as far back as 2600 BCE. Most ginkgo biloba supplements are made from the leaves of the ginkgo tree, one of the longest-lived tree species on the planet, dating back more than 200 million years. A single ginkgo tree can live for as long as 1,000 years, so is it any wonder these trees may help improve your memory?

A 2015 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Health Care and Sciences looked at the efficacy and safety of ginkgo biloba extract for the treatment of dementia. It found that taking a 240-mg daily dose of ginkgo biloba extract is effective and safe in the treatment of patients with Alzheimer’s disease complicated by dementia, as well as vascular and mild forms of dementia.

A human trial on healthy, active young men found that six weeks’ supplementation with ginkgo biloba provided a boost in athletic performance, endurance, and antioxidant capacity. The study, published in Archives of Medical Science in 2015, found ginko also elicited better neuroprotection through increased exercise-induced production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a biomarker that serves to modulate brain activity and plays a part in neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to regenerate in a healthy manner.

Resveratrol

Like curcumin, resveratrol is a natural plant polyphenol responsible for the deep color of wine, grapes, and red and blue berries. Known to pack an antioxidant punch, resveratrol has been synthesized into supplement form with promises to remedy everything from overweight to heart disease. But what does science say about this trendy panacea when it comes to brain health?

A 2017 Australian study tested whether chronic supplementation with resveratrol could improve brain function, cognition, and mood in post-menopausal women. Eighty women aged 45 to 85 years were randomized to receive resveratrol or placebo for 14 weeks. Effects on cognitive performance, cerebral blood flow, and arterial stiffness in the middle cerebral artery were measured.

Cerebrovascular responsiveness (CVR) to both cognitive testing and hypercapnia (excessive carbon dioxide in the blood) were also assessed, and mood questionnaires were administered. Compared to placebo, resveratrol elicited 17 percent increases in CVR to both hypercapnic and cognitive stimuli. Performance on cognitive tasks for verbal memory significantly improved, as did overall cognitive performance.

Mood also improved in multiple measures, indicating that regular consumption of a modest dose of resveratrol may enhance both cerebrovascular function and cognition. Researchers posited that resveratrol supplementation could potentially reduce the heightened risk of accelerated cognitive decline in post-menopausal women and offers a promising therapeutic treatment for this population group.

Melatonin

Melatonin has garnered fame as a natural sleep-aid, but did you know that it also protects the brain? A naturally occurring hormone that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle, melatonin is a neuroprotective agent that may hold therapeutic promise for brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and stroke.

Secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, melatonin can also be taken as a supplement. Supplementation has been shown to reduce the incidence of delirium in older adults. A 2018 meta-analysis of both human and animal studies provided clinical evidence that melatonin treatment after traumatic brain injury (TBI) can significantly improve both pathological and behavioral outcomes in TBI patients. Observed results, published in BMC Geriatrics include reduced size of contusions and cerebral edema, and enhanced cognition.

The journal Neural Regeneration Research published a 2021 animal study on the effects of melatonin on rats with induced Alzheimer’s disease. Rats were administered 30 mg of melatonin per kilogram (kg) of body weight for 13 consecutive days.

Melatonin supplementation ameliorated learning and memory impairments on maze tests, improved the morphology and density of microvessels in the brain, alleviated pathological injuries of cerebral neurons, and decreased the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and its receptors. Researchers concluded that melatonin supplementation can improve the cognitive function of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Cannabidiol

Cannabidiol, or CBD as it’s commonly known, is an isolated active compound in the cannabis plant that has been shown to effectively treat insomnia, pain, and brain disorders such as anxiety and epilepsy. Despite demonstrating such powerful effects on the brain, CBD is non-psychoactive, meaning it won’t get you high. But according to the latest medical science, it may possess strong neuroprotective properties to support your brain as you age.

Studies on CBD as an adjunct treatment for Parkinson’s disease patients have yielded promising results. Published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, a 2009 study tested six Parkinson’s patients and found that doses of CBD ranging from 150 mg to 400 mg over four weeks produced significant improvements in psychosis episodes and symptoms.

In 2014, researchers conducted a double-blind trial with a group of 21 Parkinson’s patients receiving either CBD at 75 mg/day, 300 mg/day, or placebo for six weeks. Increases in well-being and quality of life were observed in the 300 mg/day group versus the placebo group. Researchers hypothesized that these improvements may have been due to cannabidiol’s “anxiolytic,” “antidepressant,” “anti-psychotic,” and “sedative” properties.

Why The Law Forbids The Medicinal Use of Natural Substances

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Why The Law Forbids The Medicinal Use of Natural Substances

According to the FDA’s legal definition, a drug is anything that “diagnoses, cures, mitigates, treats, or prevents a disease.”

The problem with this definition is that there are numerous substances, as readily available and benign as found on our spice racks, which have been proven by countless millennia of human experience to mitigate, prevent and in some cases cure disease, and which cannot be called drugs according to the FDA.

How can this be? Well, the FDA has assumed for itself Godlike power, requiring that its official approval be obtained before any substance can legally be used in the prevention and treatment of disease.

The FDA’s legal-regulatory control therefore is totalitarian and Napoleonic in construct; what it does not explicitly permit as a medicine is implicitly forbidden.

Historically the FDA has required new drugs undergo expensive and elaborate multi-phased clinical trials, which are out of the grasp of any ordinary interest who might want to demonstrate the efficacy of a non-patentable (and therefore unprofitable) herb, food or spice.

The average out-of-pocket cost for obtaining a new drug approval is US$ 802 million dollars,[1] and therefore an investor putting capital into bringing to market a substance that does not lend itself to market exclusivity and therefore cannot produce a return on investment, is committing economic suicide, if not also breaking the law. The investor actually has a legally-binding fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to make a profit. And therefore, capital will not flow into any would-be commodity that can be produced or obtained with ease, including most things that grow freely on this Earth.

It is an interesting footnote in history that shortly after the Declaration of Independence, Congress declared that natural substances, e.g. water or salt, were God’s gift to mankind and that therefore products of nature should be limited in their patent protection. While this was a noble declaration, it has actually been used against those whose rights it would protect. It has forced private interests to synthetically alter natural substances — for instance the burgeoning biotech field of recombinant DNA technology, i.e. genetically modified organisms (GMOs) — for the sole reason that it guarantees them ownership/patent rights.

In fact, a medical system that legally requires it make a profit threatens to destroy and/or incriminate itself if non-patented, non-profitable natural substances or therapies are employed. It also results in so much collateral damage to those it purports to serve that it could rightly be called a modern form of human sacrifice.

As a result, instead of choosing prospective medicines logically: because they work, are easily accessible, and safe, billions of dollars flow in the exact opposite direction, capitalizing only those substances which are unnatural, and therefore while proprietary are almost invariably unsafe, and whose access and administration can be intensively controlled.

Has The Attempt To Co-opt Medicine Through the Drug-Based Model Undone Itself? 

And yet, there is a silver lining to the story. Due to the fact that our bodies are ultimately constructed from the natural things (food, air and water), and obey very strict natural laws such as the well-known principle of chirality (handedness) – the fact that all amino acids in our body turn a beam of polarized light in the left-handed direction (L-lysine) and sugars to the right-handed direction (D-ribose)– one cannot simply create biologically active, synthetic drugs arbitrarily, as a mistake in handedness (or similar property) could be fatal. Nature, therefore, still provides an elegant biomolecular architecture of irreproducible intelligence and complexity, from which synthetic analogs are modeled and/or derivatives are spun.

As a result, billions of dollars of drug industry and government money (i.e. tax payer money) flow into finding lead compounds for drug development.  Nature is put on the rack, if you will, and her secrets teased from her through innumerable animal and test tube experiments, in order to find compounds that can then be converted into synthetic, patented drugs.

Inadvertently, some of the very same companies and interests which require that natural substances not receive the same drug-approval status as synthetic ones, are funding research that prove basic vitamins, foods and spices are as effective or more effective – and usually much safer – than the drugs  they are developing to replace or supplant them.

This means that tens of thousands of studies do exist showing that natural substances may prevent and/or treat disease, at least in the in vitro (test tube) and animal models. These results often confirm traditional uses in Ayurvedic, Chinese and other traditional systems of medicine, and therefore may be compelling enough for individuals or healthcare practitioners to use the information to inform their treatment decisions.

The Case For Curcumin In the Prevention and Treatment of Disease

The government biomedical and life sciences database known as Medline contains over 21 million published study citations, and is accessible to search through engines such as Pubmed.gov.  2.6 million of them contain reference to cancer.  115,000 of them remain after applying the “Complementary Medicine” filter.   There are 2,625 topics on cancerwhich can be found indexed on the GreenMedInfo.com database, referencing 612 natural substances of potential value.

Turmeric, and particularly its polyphenolic constituent known as curcumin, which gives the spice its golden hue, is one of the most extensively studied natural compounds of all time, with 4588 references to it on the National Library of Medicine’s bibliographic database known as Medline [as of 2.25.2012]. And yet, despite having been shown to have therapeutic value in over 500 disease states in animal and in vitro studies, it still has not been the subject of extensive human clinical research – for the reasons stated above.

GreenMedInfo.com, an open source natural medicine database, has indexed curcumin’s anti-cancer properties in over 50 cancers, with the top 10 most cancers researched in association with curcumin listed below.

Cancer Number of Articles
Breast Cancer 58
Colorectal Cancer 23
Colon Cancer 51
Prostate Cancer 42
Pancreatic Cancer 24
Cancers: Drug Resistant 40
Lung Cancer 37
Liver Cancer 27
Cancer Metastasis 32
Skin Cancer 15

As one can see curcumin holds great promise. It has been repeatedly demonstrated to possess simultaneously both chemoprotective/chemosensitizing and radioprotective/radiosensitizing properties, meaning it is capable of reducing the adverse effects on healthy cells caused by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as well as enhance the cancer-killing properties of these conventional therapies. It also has an exceptionally high margin of safety, at least an order of magnitude greater than commonly used conventional chemotherapy agents such as 5-fluoruracil.[2] Given these facts curcumin, at the very least, should be considered an ideal candidate for use as an adjuvant in integrative cancer care, and perhaps as a first-line treatment alternative to conventional chemo-agents.

For additional information on the remarkable research supporting the use of Turmeric and Curcumin in medicine, watch the video. URL:https://youtu.be/s2AZOMu0bVA

 

Why The Law Forbids The Medicinal Use of Natural Substances

Posted by

0


Why The Law Forbids The Medicinal Use of Natural Substances

According to the FDA’s legal definition, a drug is anything that “diagnoses, cures, mitigates, treats, or prevents a disease.”

The problem with this definition is that there are numerous substances, as readily available and benign as found on our spice racks, which have been proven by countless millennia of human experience to mitigate, prevent and in some cases cure disease, and which cannot be called drugs according to the FDA.

How can this be? Well, the FDA has assumed for itself Godlike power, requiring that its official approval be obtained before any substance can legally be used in the prevention and treatment of disease.

The FDA’s legal-regulatory control therefore is totalitarian and Napoleonic in construct; what it does not explicitly permit as a medicine is implicitly forbidden.

Historically the FDA has required new drugs undergo expensive and elaborate multi-phased clinical trials, which are out of the grasp of any ordinary interest who might want to demonstrate the efficacy of a non-patentable (and therefore unprofitable) herb, food or spice.

The average out-of-pocket cost for obtaining a new drug approval is US$ 802 million dollars,[1] and therefore an investor putting capital into bringing to market a substance that does not lend itself to market exclusivity and therefore cannot produce a return on investment, is committing economic suicide, if not also breaking the law. The investor actually has a legally-binding fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to make a profit. And therefore, capital will not flow into any would-be commodity that can be produced or obtained with ease, including most things that grow freely on this Earth.

It is an interesting footnote in history that shortly after the Declaration of Independence, Congress declared that natural substances, e.g. water or salt, were God’s gift to mankind and that therefore products of nature should be limited in their patent protection. While this was a noble declaration, it has actually been used against those whose rights it would protect. It has forced private interests to synthetically alter natural substances — for instance the burgeoning biotech field of recombinant DNA technology, i.e. genetically modified organisms (GMOs) — for the sole reason that it guarantees them ownership/patent rights.

In fact, a medical system that legally requires it make a profit threatens to destroy and/or incriminate itself if non-patented, non-profitable natural substances or therapies are employed. It also results in so much collateral damage to those it purports to serve that it could rightly be called a modern form of human sacrifice.

As a result, instead of choosing prospective medicines logically: because they work, are easily accessible, and safe, billions of dollars flow in the exact opposite direction, capitalizing only those substances which areunnatural, and therefore while proprietary are almost invariably unsafe, and whose access and administration can be intensively controlled.

Has The Attempt To Co-opt Medicine Through the Drug-Based Model Undone Itself? 

And yet, there is a silver lining to the story. Due to the fact that our bodies are ultimately constructed from the natural things (food, air and water), and obey very strict natural laws such as the well-known principle of chirality (handedness) – the fact that all amino acids in our body turn a beam of polarized light in the left-handed direction (L-lysine) and sugars to the right-handed direction (D-ribose)– one cannot simply create biologically active, synthetic drugs arbitrarily, as a mistake in handedness (or similar property) could be fatal. Nature, therefore, still provides an elegant biomolecular architecture of irreproducible intelligence and complexity, from which synthetic analogs are modeled and/or derivatives are spun.

As a result, billions of dollars of drug industry and government money (i.e. tax payer money) flow into finding lead compounds for drug development.  Nature is put on the rack, if you will, and her secrets teased from her through innumerable animal and test tube experiments, in order to find compounds that can then be converted into synthetic, patented drugs.

Inadvertently, some of the very same companies and interests which require that natural substances not receive the same drug-approval status as synthetic ones, are funding research that prove basicvitamins, foods and spices are as effective or more effective – and usually much safer – than the drugs  they are developing to replace or supplant them.

This means that tens of thousands of studies do exist showing that natural substances may prevent and/or treat disease, at least in the in vitro (test tube) and animal models. These results often confirm traditional uses in Ayurvedic, Chinese and other traditional systems of medicine, and therefore may be compelling enough for individuals or healthcare practitioners to use the information to inform their treatment decisions.

The Case For Curcumin In the Prevention and Treatment of Disease

The government biomedical and life sciences database known as Medline contains over 21 million published study citations, and is accessible to search through engines such as Pubmed.gov.  2.6 million of them contain reference to cancer.  115,000 of them remain after applying the “Complementary Medicine” filter.   There are 2,625 topics on cancerwhich can be found indexed on the GreenMedInfo.com database, referencing 612 natural substances of potential value.

Turmeric, and particularly its polyphenolic constituent known ascurcumin, which gives the spice its golden hue, is one of the most extensively studied natural compounds of all time, with 4588 referencesto it on the National Library of Medicine’s bibliographic database known as Medline [as of 2.25.2012]. And yet, despite having been shown to have therapeutic value in over 500 disease states in animal and in vitro studies, it still has not been the subject of extensive human clinical research – for the reasons stated above.

GreenMedInfo.com, an open source natural medicine database, has indexed curcumin’s anti-cancer properties in over 50 cancers, with the top 10 most cancers researched in association with curcumin listed below.

Cancer Number of Articles
Breast Cancer 58
Colorectal Cancer 23
Colon Cancer 51
Prostate Cancer 42
Pancreatic Cancer 24
Cancers: Drug Resistant 40
Lung Cancer 37
Liver Cancer 27
Cancer Metastasis 32
Skin Cancer 15

As one can see curcumin holds great promise. It has been repeatedly demonstrated to possess simultaneously both chemoprotective/chemosensitizing and radioprotective/radiosensitizing properties, meaning it is capable of reducing the adverse effects on healthy cells caused by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as well as enhance the cancer-killing properties of these conventional therapies. It also has an exceptionally high margin of safety, at least an order of magnitude greater than commonly used conventional chemotherapy agents such as 5-fluoruracil.[2] Given these facts curcumin, at the very least, should be considered an ideal candidate for use as an adjuvant in integrative cancer care, and perhaps as a first-line treatment alternative to conventional chemo-agents.

Why The Law Forbids The Medicinal Use of Natural Substances

Posted by

0


Why The Law Forbids The Medicinal Use of Natural Substances

According to the FDA’s legal definition, a drug is anything that “diagnoses, cures, mitigates, treats, or prevents a disease.”

The problem with this definition is that there are numerous substances, as readily available and benign as found on our spice racks, which have been proven by countless millennia of human experience to mitigate, prevent and in some cases cure disease, and which cannot be called drugs according to the FDA.

How can this be? Well, the FDA has assumed for itself Godlike power, requiring that its official approval be obtained before any substance can legally be used in the prevention and treatment of disease.

The FDA’s legal-regulatory control therefore is totalitarian and Napoleonic in construct; what it does not explicitly permit as a medicine is implicitly forbidden.

Historically the FDA has required new drugs undergo expensive and elaborate multi-phased clinical trials, which are out of the grasp of any ordinary interest who might want to demonstrate the efficacy of a non-patentable (and therefore unprofitable) herb, food or spice.

The average out-of-pocket cost for obtaining a new drug approval is US$ 802 million dollars,[1] and therefore an investor putting capital into bringing to market a substance that does not lend itself to market exclusivity and therefore cannot produce a return on investment, is committing economic suicide, if not also breaking the law. The investor actually has a legally-binding fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to make a profit. And therefore, capital will not flow into any would-be commodity that can be produced or obtained with ease, including most things that grow freely on this Earth.

It is an interesting footnote in history that shortly after the Declaration of Independence, Congress declared that natural substances, e.g. water or salt, were God’s gift to mankind and that therefore products of nature should be limited in their patent protection. While this was a noble declaration, it has actually been used against those whose rights it would protect. It has forced private interests to synthetically alter natural substances — for instance the burgeoning biotech field of recombinant DNA technology, i.e. genetically modified organisms (GMOs) — for the sole reason that it guarantees them ownership/patent rights.

In fact, a medical system that legally requires it make a profit threatens to destroy and/or incriminate itself if non-patented, non-profitable natural substances or therapies are employed. It also results in so much collateral damage to those it purports to serve that it could rightly be called a modern form of human sacrifice.

As a result, instead of choosing prospective medicines logically: because they work, are easily accessible, and safe, billions of dollars flow in the exact opposite direction, capitalizing only those substances which are unnatural, and therefore while proprietary are almost invariably unsafe, and whose access and administration can be intensively controlled.

Has The Attempt To Co-opt Medicine Through the Drug-Based Model Undone Itself? 

And yet, there is a silver lining to the story. Due to the fact that our bodies are ultimately constructed from the natural things (food, air and water), and obey very strict natural laws such as the well-known principle of chirality (handedness) – the fact that all amino acids in our body turn a beam of polarized light in the left-handed direction (L-lysine) and sugars to the right-handed direction (D-ribose)– one cannot simply create biologically active, synthetic drugs arbitrarily, as a mistake in handedness (or similar property) could be fatal. Nature, therefore, still provides an elegant biomolecular architecture of irreproducible intelligence and complexity, from which synthetic analogs are modeled and/or derivatives are spun.

As a result, billions of dollars of drug industry and government money (i.e. tax payer money) flow into finding lead compounds for drug development.  Nature is put on the rack, if you will, and her secrets teased from her through innumerable animal and test tube experiments, in order to find compounds that can then be converted into synthetic, patented drugs.

Inadvertently, some of the very same companies and interests which require that natural substances not receive the same drug-approval status as synthetic ones, are funding research that prove basic vitamins, foods and spices are as effective or more effective – and usually much safer – than the drugs  they are developing to replace or supplant them.

This means that tens of thousands of studies do exist showing that natural substances may prevent and/or treat disease, at least in the in vitro (test tube) and animal models. These results often confirm traditional uses in Ayurvedic, Chinese and other traditional systems of medicine, and therefore may be compelling enough for individuals or healthcare practitioners to use the information to inform their treatment decisions.

The Case For Curcumin In the Prevention and Treatment of Disease

The government biomedical and life sciences database known as Medline contains over 21 million published study citations, and is accessible to search through engines such as Pubmed.gov.  2.6 million of them contain reference to cancer.  115,000 of them remain after applying the “Complementary Medicine” filter.   There are 2,625 topics on cancer which can be found indexed on the GreenMedInfo.com database, referencing 612 natural substances of potential value.

Turmeric, and particularly its polyphenolic constituent known as curcumin, which gives the spice its golden hue, is one of the most extensively studied natural compounds of all time, with 4588 references to it on the National Library of Medicine’s bibliographic database known as Medline [as of 2.25.2012]. And yet, despite having been shown to have therapeutic value in over 500 disease states in animal and in vitro studies, it still has not been the subject of extensive human clinical research – for the reasons stated above.

GreenMedInfo.com, an open source natural medicine database, has indexed curcumin’s anti-cancer properties in over 50 cancers, with the top 10 most cancers researched in association with curcumin listed below.

Cancer Number of Articles
Breast Cancer 58
Colorectal Cancer 23
Colon Cancer 51
Prostate Cancer 42
Pancreatic Cancer 24
Cancers: Drug Resistant 40
Lung Cancer 37
Liver Cancer 27
Cancer Metastasis 32
Skin Cancer 15

Sources: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/substance/curcumin

As one can see curcumin holds great promise. It has been repeatedly demonstrated to possess simultaneously both chemoprotective/chemosensitizing and radioprotective/radiosensitizing properties, meaning it is capable of reducing the adverse effects on healthy cells caused by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as well as enhance the cancer-killing properties of these conventional therapies. It also has an exceptionally high margin of safety, at least an order of magnitude greater than commonly used conventional chemotherapy agents such as 5-fluoruracil.[2] Given these facts curcumin, at the very least, should be considered an ideal candidate for use as an adjuvant in integrative cancer care, and perhaps as a first-line treatment alternative to conventional chemo-agents.