Skip to main content

How to Treat Lupus with Turmeric

Different autoimmune diseases tend to target different organs. If our immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells in our pancreas, we can end up with type 1 diabetes. If it attacks our thyroid gland, we can end up with hypothyroidism. But, in the autoimmune disease lupus, our immune system attacks the very nucleus of our cells, often producing antibodies and attacking our DNA itself. So, lupus can damage any organ system and result in almost any complication. Women are nine times as likely to get it, and the peak age of diagnosis is too often at the peak of life. Hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of Americans suffer from this dreaded disease. One of the most common organ-threatening manifestations is kidney inflammation, occurring in as many as half of the patients.

Kidney inflammation is also one of the most serious effects of lupus, caused by the disease itself “or as a result of intense immunosuppressive drug toxicity.” Chemotherapy drugs like Cytoxan (cyclophosphamide), for example, can have severe, life-threatening side effects that may include leukemia and bladder cancer, and many women lose their hair and become permanently infertile. There is a desperate need for better treatment options.

As I show in my video Fighting Lupus with Turmeric: Good as Gold, oral supplementation of turmeric decreases proteinuria, hematuria, and systolic blood pressure—the cardinal clinical manifestations in patients suffering from relapsing or refractory (meaning, untreatable) lupus kidney inflammation––according to a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. The study looked at proteinuria, the spilling of protein into the urine, “an ominous prognostic sign.” In the control group, three people got better, three people got worse, and the rest pretty much stayed the same. In the turmeric group, one got worse, one stayed the same, but the rest all got better.

Note that the researchers used turmeric, the whole spice, and not curcumin, which is an extracted component often given in pill form. They took women with out-of-control lupus and had them take a quarter teaspoon of turmeric with each meal for three months. From my local supermarket, that would come out to be about a nickel a dose, compared with $35,000 a year for one of the latest lupus drugs. Which of the two treatments do you imagine doctors are more likely to be told about?

For more on the anti-inflammatory effects of turmeric, see:

What about its anti-cancer effects?

For practical considerations, see Boosting the Bioavailability of Curcumin and Who Shouldn’t Consume Curcumin or Turmeric?.

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my free videos here and watch my live, year-in-review presentations:



from NutritionFacts.org https://ift.tt/2oxBBX6
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Botched Circumcision Leads to Penis Amputation for Baby Boy

From  cord blood banking  to  baby naming ceremonies , parents of newborns have a bevy of key decisions to make when it comes to medical procedures and religious and/or cultural practices. For instance, as soon as a couple learns they're having a boy, they might find themselves grappling with the  decision to circumcise—or not . It's an individual, personal decision for every family. Thankfully, when parents opt in, most circumcisions go off without a hitch. However, a shocking story out of Egypt highlights one instance in which the routine procedure went terribly awry. A father from Cairo is speaking out after his son's  penis had to be amputated following a botched circumcision . The Jerusalem Post  reported that the father named Ashraf Helmi says he took his child to Cairo to be vaccinated and was convinced by his sister-in-law and a family friend to have his  1-month-old son Mohamed circumcised during the same doctor's visit. According to  Me...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Much Calcium do You Really Need

If your body does not receive enough calcium, it puts you at risk of osteoporosis and bone breakage. However, the amount of calcium required by your body largely depends on your age and gender. So, find out how much calcium you need. from Only My Health - Diet & Nutrition http://ift.tt/1tiyLxw
Post a Comment
Read more

Reduce Acid-Forming Proteins to Protect Kidney Function

Chronic kidney disease is a major public health problem affecting about one in eight Americans, increasing the risks of disease and death even among those with only mild decreases in kidney function. Low-cost, low-risk preventive strategies that anyone can do are needed to address the epidemic of kidney disease. I discuss some of these in my video Protein Source: An Acid Test for Kidney Function . Diet plays a role in kidney function decline. “Specifically, diets higher in animal protein, animal fat, and cholesterol” may be associated with protein leakage into the urine, which is a sign of kidney damage, and, generally, “diets higher in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, but lower in meat and sweets, may be protective” against kidney function decline. In comparison to the diet eaten by our ancient ancestors, not only are we eating more saturated fat, sugar, and salt, we now also eat an acid-producing diet, as opposed to a base-producing, or alkaline, diet. Ancestral human diet...
Post a Comment
Read more