Unanswered What is everyone's Thoughts On Turmeric ?

mynewusername

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ive been researching supplements and reading wiki articles and figuring **** myself since around 2015, i got up to knowing the interleukins and their effects in parts of the body by their names, taken curcumin before and in low doses it helped my hair and skin a bit, but it actually reduces your gains because it lowers inflamation from the muscle damage, which is something you want because everything inflammation is is a response that helps cells and nutrients get to a certain part of the body quicker, also its not good long term there have been cases of people with kidney stones and trash livers cause they took curcumin without stopping for too long. theres no supplement out there that works really, just be loaded on all of the nutrients from raw milk, raw butter, meat and pasture raised eggs, take some creatine, take b complex if you need to, you can take organ meats / bone broth / cod liver oil and **** like that once a week and take mk 677, thats everything you need to know in life.

also if ur thyroid isnt too fast already u can take ashwaghanda.
 
cheftepesh1

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Been taking for over a year and no issues with it.
 
poison

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In general Curcumin helps some gastric disorders. Are you taking Curcumin with bioperine? Because that's a more likely culprit.
 

SweetLou321

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That’s true, there are other ingredients for exercise-induced joint pain that would likely be better candidates than curcumin if that’s your issue. I’m not suggesting to use curcumin to try to compensate for or overcome exercise-induced joint pain so much as, like you I said, if you just have general joint issues as you likely start to age. But, then again, some of these ingredients that can help with exercise-induced joint pain can also help with other causes of joint pain. I know there’s a few ingredients that fit this bill, and you mentioned one of them.
I was reviewing more information on curcumin and its potential effects on muscle tissue, and I thought I would update this thread with it.

I will state, that there is still a lack of long term data. I first theorized that due to curcumin antioxidant effects, it could negatively impact muscle growth and recovery, similar to things like vit c, vit E, and NAC. Curcumin provides antioxidant effects through the upregulation of Nrf2 instead of blunting reactive oxygen specie (ROS) directly. We do not want to blunt mitochondrial ROS directly from muscle tissue during exercise as ROS mediates muscle damage caused by successive contraction, initiates repair, initiates hypertrophy, and helps a muscle produce force. Nrf2 is a hormetic regulator of naturally produced antioxidants. We want the body to respond, as needed, to the production of ROS to help keep the levels in the beneficial range without overly blunting them or allowing them to get too high.

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcumin-enhances-effect-running-on-muscle-cells.html

It may be worth while to define some terms now.

Muscle growth is the addition of new fibers or additions to fibers.
Muscle repair is the process of salvaging damaged muscle tissue and getting it back to baseline without removing the tissue itself.
Muscle regeneration is the removing of overly damages tissue and rebuilding it back to baseline levels.

Muscle growth and repair/regeneration have similar processes, but they are not the same thing it seems.

Next I theorized that since curcumin blunted post-wo blood levels of some inflammatory markers that it could blunt the adaptive process. Blood levels of any cytokine related to exercise is simply a proxy to what is happening in the muscle. The main cytokine of interest is IL-6 for muscle growth. Curcumin has shown mixed results on blood levels of IL-6 after exercise. More often then not, curcumin really only impacts post-wo blood levels of IL-8. IL-8 in the blood after exercise is rare and only related to the needed generation of an inflammatory response to signal for infiltrating immune cells to enter the damaged tissue, to help with repair, not growth. Curcumin can impact inflammation mainly by inhibiting Nf-kB, it is week at inhibiting COX-1 and COX-2 directly like NSAIDs do. It can also inhibit the production on the prostaglandin PGE2 specifically. This is not all that important, PGE2 is associated with muscle breakdown and the prostaglandin we work after exercise is PGF2a, unlikely to be a factor related to curcumin use. Nf-kB is upsteam of COX-1 and COX-2, it doesn't seem curcumin has a strong effect all the way downstream as there are mixed results on post-wo blood levels of TNF-a and IL-6. Regardless, inhibiting Nf-kB has been implicated in enhancing muscle repair and regeneration processes. In fact, muscles being deficient in Nf-kB has been associated with hypertrophy as well. I doubt curcumin has a strong effect on post-wo inflammatory signals related to adaptations.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19390211.2019.1604604

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-11-31

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25795285

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.13373

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.13373

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664031/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC379295/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3320801/

https://www.e-jer.org/journal/view.php?number=2013600164

https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/molecular-therapy/fulltext/S1525-0016(16)30524-X

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC379295/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2480606/

IL-8 does play a role in muscle repair, but curcumin has been shown repeatedly to lower post-wo DOMs, increase the rate of return to performance, and lower post-wo blood levels of markers associated with muscle damage. It was even shown on MRI to prevent muscle damage in the first place. Less damage, less need for plasma IL-8 levels to be elevated to initiate infiltrating immune cells and repair.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18059606-the-biological-roles-of-exercise-induced-cytokines-il-6-il-8-and-il-15/

https://www.ergo-log.com/mri-captures-anticatabolic-effect-of-curcumin.html

Curcumin also directly helps with muscle repair and prevents muscle damage by upregulating XIAP. It also helps repair by encourage the clearing away of infiltrating immune cells that produce inflammation and encourages the phase switch of M1 macrophages to M2 macrophages (which are associated with increased rates of repair and hypertrophy).

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcuminanabolic.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3145944/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955286318307010#bb0825

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6353900/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005097

When it comes to muscle regeneration, curcumin was shown to improve the rate of this by a factor of 5 by increasing EMHC content.

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcuminrecovery.html

Curcumin can increase AMPK activity in some lines of research but has not been shown to negatively impact protein synthesis in muscle tissue.

https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/EP085049

For healthy people, I do not see curcumin being as much of a concern. I have changed my stance, it is a really promising ingredient for enhancing recovery and preventing breakdown without the potential drawbacks of other items when it comes to negatively impacting the adaptive signals that are protein synthesis, cytokine production, and ROS production.

I didn't proof this at all, just wanted to share when I had a moment.
 
muscleupcrohn

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I was reviewing more information on curcumin and its potential effects on muscle tissue, and I thought I would update this thread with it.

I will state, that there is still a lack of long term data. I first theorized that due to curcumin antioxidant effects, it could negatively impact muscle growth and recovery, similar to things like vit c, vit E, and NAC. Curcumin provides antioxidant effects through the upregulation of Nrf2 instead of blunting reactive oxygen specie (ROS) directly. We do not want to blunt mitochondrial ROS directly from muscle tissue during exercise as ROS mediates muscle damage caused by successive contraction, initiates repair, initiates hypertrophy, and helps a muscle produce force. Nrf2 is a hormetic regulator of naturally produced antioxidants. We want the body to respond, as needed, to the production of ROS to help keep the levels in the beneficial range without overly blunting them or allowing them to get too high.

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcumin-enhances-effect-running-on-muscle-cells.html

It may be worth while to define some terms now.

Muscle growth is the addition of new fibers or additions to fibers.
Muscle repair is the process of salvaging damaged muscle tissue and getting it back to baseline without removing the tissue itself.
Muscle regeneration is the removing of overly damages tissue and rebuilding it back to baseline levels.

Muscle growth and repair/regeneration have similar processes, but they are not the same thing it seems.

Next I theorized that since curcumin blunted post-wo blood levels of some inflammatory markers that it could blunt the adaptive process. Blood levels of any cytokine related to exercise is simply a proxy to what is happening in the muscle. The main cytokine of interest is IL-6 for muscle growth. Curcumin has shown mixed results on blood levels of IL-6 after exercise. More often then not, curcumin really only impacts post-wo blood levels of IL-8. IL-8 in the blood after exercise is rare and only related to the needed generation of an inflammatory response to signal for infiltrating immune cells to enter the damaged tissue, to help with repair, not growth. Curcumin can impact inflammation mainly by inhibiting Nf-kB, it is week at inhibiting COX-1 and COX-2 directly like NSAIDs do. It can also inhibit the production on the prostaglandin PGE2 specifically. This is not all that important, PGE2 is associated with muscle breakdown and the prostaglandin we work after exercise is PGF2a, unlikely to be a factor related to curcumin use. Nf-kB is upsteam of COX-1 and COX-2, it doesn't seem curcumin has a strong effect all the way downstream as there are mixed results on post-wo blood levels of TNF-a and IL-6. Regardless, inhibiting Nf-kB has been implicated in enhancing muscle repair and regeneration processes. In fact, muscles being deficient in Nf-kB has been associated with hypertrophy as well. I doubt curcumin has a strong effect on post-wo inflammatory signals related to adaptations.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19390211.2019.1604604

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-11-31

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25795285

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.13373

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.13373

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664031/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC379295/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3320801/

https://www.e-jer.org/journal/view.php?number=2013600164

https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/molecular-therapy/fulltext/S1525-0016(16)30524-X

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC379295/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2480606/

IL-8 does play a role in muscle repair, but curcumin has been shown repeatedly to lower post-wo DOMs, increase the rate of return to performance, and lower post-wo blood levels of markers associated with muscle damage. It was even shown on MRI to prevent muscle damage in the first place. Less damage, less need for plasma IL-8 levels to be elevated to initiate infiltrating immune cells and repair.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18059606-the-biological-roles-of-exercise-induced-cytokines-il-6-il-8-and-il-15/

https://www.ergo-log.com/mri-captures-anticatabolic-effect-of-curcumin.html

Curcumin also directly helps with muscle repair and prevents muscle damage by upregulating XIAP. It also helps repair by encourage the clearing away of infiltrating immune cells that produce inflammation and encourages the phase switch of M1 macrophages to M2 macrophages (which are associated with increased rates of repair and hypertrophy).

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcuminanabolic.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3145944/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955286318307010#bb0825

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6353900/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005097

When it comes to muscle regeneration, curcumin was shown to improve the rate of this by a factor of 5 by increasing EMHC content.

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcuminrecovery.html

Curcumin can increase AMPK activity in some lines of research but has not been shown to negatively impact protein synthesis in muscle tissue.

https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/EP085049

For healthy people, I do not see curcumin being as much of a concern. I have changed my stance, it is a really promising ingredient for enhancing recovery and preventing breakdown without the potential drawbacks of other items when it comes to negatively impacting the adaptive signals that are protein synthesis, cytokine production, and ROS production.

I didn't proof this at all, just wanted to share when I had a moment.
Solid looking post; I’ll have to read it all haha. TBH, I just take my curcumin away from my workout and don’t sweat it. Normal plain curcumin if for GI benefits, some enhanced form for anything else. It’s so generally healthy, and also affordable. I honestly don’t think it has a major impact on muscle growth in either direction TBH. Although if it helps with pain or recovery a bit, that could indirectly help over time I suppose.
 
jswain34

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I was reviewing more information on curcumin and its potential effects on muscle tissue, and I thought I would update this thread with it.
1. Strong post.

2. Dude...you back?! Or just updating a thread out of the goodness of your heart?
 

SweetLou321

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Solid looking post; I’ll have to read it all haha. TBH, I just take my curcumin away from my workout and don’t sweat it. Normal plain curcumin if for GI benefits, some enhanced form for anything else. It’s so generally healthy, and also affordable. I honestly don’t think it has a major impact on muscle growth in either direction TBH. Although if it helps with pain or recovery a bit, that could indirectly help over time I suppose.
I respect your view point and your counter arguments lead me to eventually dig more into the MOA of curcumin. I hope some long term data comes out eventually. If it does not impact adaptations that leads to muscle growth, like I suspect, and it improves all aspects of recovery, then its likely it will enhance growth long term. Recovery is a bottle neck for growth, they seem to compete for the same resources. The trend right now is that if there is to much damage, we cannot grow at our maximum potential between bouts of training. Thanks again for being the opposing view point.
 

SweetLou321

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1. Strong post.

2. Dude...you back?! Or just updating a thread out of the goodness of your heart?
I'm around once in a while when I have a few moments of free time. I more so contribute by spreading science and hot takes then anything else anymore lol. How have you been?
 

mynewusername

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it makes you recover faster but it also reduces the amount of muscle u make so u can workout more offten but from less inflammation etc ul get less muscle and be less swole. dont take it its cancer.
 

Resolve10

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Epic post man.

In general I think the fear of some of these things really limiting muscle growth in general is overblown as we still don't even fully comprehend the muscle growth process as well as some think.

That said you broke that down to an epic level and I commend the work and thought process there. Wow.
 
muscleupcrohn

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it makes you recover faster but it also reduces the amount of muscle u make so u can workout more offten but from less inflammation etc ul get less muscle and be less swole. dont take it its cancer.
You serious here mate?
 
muscleupcrohn

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I respect your view point and your counter arguments lead me to eventually dig more into the MOA of curcumin. I hope some long term data comes out eventually. If it does not impact adaptations that leads to muscle growth, like I suspect, and it improves all aspects of recovery, then its likely it will enhance growth long term. Recovery is a bottle neck for growth, they seem to compete for the same resources. The trend right now is that if there is to much damage, we cannot grow at our maximum potential between bouts of training. Thanks again for being the opposing view point.
Thanks man! Big props to you for doing a LOT of research and sharing it here!
 
WannabeBatman

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Figured I’d jump in here with some anecdotal information on turmeric. I’ve been using it for years, for purposes of general health, in the form of 95% Curcuminoids, and found that it works wonders for joint pain when using an aromatase inhibitor. Whenever I utilized Letro during/post gear cycles I found that it alleviated a majority of the achy joint pain.
 

ironkill

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I was reviewing more information on curcumin and its potential effects on muscle tissue, and I thought I would update this thread with it.

I will state, that there is still a lack of long term data. I first theorized that due to curcumin antioxidant effects, it could negatively impact muscle growth and recovery, similar to things like vit c, vit E, and NAC. Curcumin provides antioxidant effects through the upregulation of Nrf2 instead of blunting reactive oxygen specie (ROS) directly. We do not want to blunt mitochondrial ROS directly from muscle tissue during exercise as ROS mediates muscle damage caused by successive contraction, initiates repair, initiates hypertrophy, and helps a muscle produce force. Nrf2 is a hormetic regulator of naturally produced antioxidants. We want the body to respond, as needed, to the production of ROS to help keep the levels in the beneficial range without overly blunting them or allowing them to get too high.

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcumin-enhances-effect-running-on-muscle-cells.html

It may be worth while to define some terms now.

Muscle growth is the addition of new fibers or additions to fibers.
Muscle repair is the process of salvaging damaged muscle tissue and getting it back to baseline without removing the tissue itself.
Muscle regeneration is the removing of overly damages tissue and rebuilding it back to baseline levels.

Muscle growth and repair/regeneration have similar processes, but they are not the same thing it seems.

Next I theorized that since curcumin blunted post-wo blood levels of some inflammatory markers that it could blunt the adaptive process. Blood levels of any cytokine related to exercise is simply a proxy to what is happening in the muscle. The main cytokine of interest is IL-6 for muscle growth. Curcumin has shown mixed results on blood levels of IL-6 after exercise. More often then not, curcumin really only impacts post-wo blood levels of IL-8. IL-8 in the blood after exercise is rare and only related to the needed generation of an inflammatory response to signal for infiltrating immune cells to enter the damaged tissue, to help with repair, not growth. Curcumin can impact inflammation mainly by inhibiting Nf-kB, it is week at inhibiting COX-1 and COX-2 directly like NSAIDs do. It can also inhibit the production on the prostaglandin PGE2 specifically. This is not all that important, PGE2 is associated with muscle breakdown and the prostaglandin we work after exercise is PGF2a, unlikely to be a factor related to curcumin use. Nf-kB is upsteam of COX-1 and COX-2, it doesn't seem curcumin has a strong effect all the way downstream as there are mixed results on post-wo blood levels of TNF-a and IL-6. Regardless, inhibiting Nf-kB has been implicated in enhancing muscle repair and regeneration processes. In fact, muscles being deficient in Nf-kB has been associated with hypertrophy as well. I doubt curcumin has a strong effect on post-wo inflammatory signals related to adaptations.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19390211.2019.1604604

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-11-31

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25795285

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.13373

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.13373

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664031/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC379295/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3320801/

https://www.e-jer.org/journal/view.php?number=2013600164

https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/molecular-therapy/fulltext/S1525-0016(16)30524-X

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC379295/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2480606/

IL-8 does play a role in muscle repair, but curcumin has been shown repeatedly to lower post-wo DOMs, increase the rate of return to performance, and lower post-wo blood levels of markers associated with muscle damage. It was even shown on MRI to prevent muscle damage in the first place. Less damage, less need for plasma IL-8 levels to be elevated to initiate infiltrating immune cells and repair.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18059606-the-biological-roles-of-exercise-induced-cytokines-il-6-il-8-and-il-15/

https://www.ergo-log.com/mri-captures-anticatabolic-effect-of-curcumin.html

Curcumin also directly helps with muscle repair and prevents muscle damage by upregulating XIAP. It also helps repair by encourage the clearing away of infiltrating immune cells that produce inflammation and encourages the phase switch of M1 macrophages to M2 macrophages (which are associated with increased rates of repair and hypertrophy).

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcuminanabolic.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3145944/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955286318307010#bb0825

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6353900/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005097

When it comes to muscle regeneration, curcumin was shown to improve the rate of this by a factor of 5 by increasing EMHC content.

https://www.ergo-log.com/curcuminrecovery.html

Curcumin can increase AMPK activity in some lines of research but has not been shown to negatively impact protein synthesis in muscle tissue.

https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/EP085049

For healthy people, I do not see curcumin being as much of a concern. I have changed my stance, it is a really promising ingredient for enhancing recovery and preventing breakdown without the potential drawbacks of other items when it comes to negatively impacting the adaptive signals that are protein synthesis, cytokine production, and ROS production.

I didn't proof this at all, just wanted to share when I had a moment.
Fantastic post dude
 

SweetLou321

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it makes you recover faster but it also reduces the amount of muscle u make so u can workout more offten but from less inflammation etc ul get less muscle and be less swole. dont take it its cancer.
Please read the whole thread, this is something that has been debated in here in detail, my last post goes over this in some depth.

But lets discuss this further then.

Is it even inflammation that causes growth? The answer is, no, not strictly anyways. Cytokines are the what many refer to simply as "inflammation". They are not inflammation but a family of peptides that have either pro or anti inflammatory effects. Some of them help regulate satellite cell (muscle stem cell) activation and myogenesis (process of forming muscle tissue). The ones of greatest interest are referred to as myokines (cytokines produced by muscle tissue itself). Myokines regulate muscle growth and repair. Pro-inflammatory cytokines from other origins, such as infiltrating immune cells can help with muscle repair, but have yet to be implicated in growth alone. It worth repeating from previous post that muscle growth and repair use the same pathways, but are not the same thing. In fact, some research suggests they compete for the same pathways. It seems we can activate only so many satellite cells and only stimulate so much myogenesis between bouts of resistance training. Given this apparent limitation, if we have too much damage, these pathways will be prioritized for repair and NOT growth.

When you preform resistance exercise, a muscle contracts. These contractions, without damage can signal the production of interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8), and some other ones I will not focus on now as they are not relevant to curcumin, IL-6 is the most important one for growth as an incivility to produce it is linked with less hypertrophy. These processes of production and not reliant of proinflammatory enzymes or signals like COX-1, COX-2, and Nf-kB. The mRNA of the muscle of IL-6 and IL-8 will go up and muscle concentrations will increase when muscle contract without damage. Blood levels are only a proxy for the content in the muscles as only under certain situations will the content in the muscle be released into the serum. Just because something can impact plasma levels of a cytokine does NOT mean it is also impacting the levels in the actual muscle.

Lets use an example to illiterate this further so we are all on the same page. Intra-wo carbs, this is a common practice by many to speed up recovery, but why? Surely you would not argue this practice would negatively impact growth? Guess what, intra-wo carbs reliably decreased post-wo plasma levels of IL-6. If we assume any lowering of a marker related to inflammation in the blood meant less growth, then this is bad right? Well, carbs intra-wo do NOT impact mRNA expression for IL-6 and thus muscle levels are maintained, but why are plasma levels lowered? Because IL-6 has MANY roles when released from muscle tissue. It works as an energy sensor during exercise to help us release stored substrates to fuel the activity we are doing. Since we are drinking carbs then we have no need for this function and thus less is released into the plasma. Ok this practice doesn't mean less growth as muscle levels of IL-6 are maintained. Then how does it help recovery? Well during muscle contractions, plasma IL-6 uptake into the muscle is increased. This means that the concentration of IL-6 in the muscle after exercise can be higher in someone who is lacking carbs compared to someone drinking them during the workout because they are not absorbing additional IL-6 from the plasma to add to what is produced and kept in the muscle itself. IL-6, has a reverse U-shaped curve for positive effects on muscle growth. This means that there is an optimal concentration that needs to be present for growth, below this, less growth, above this, less growth. Carbs during a workout can help keep us in an optimal range of muscle IL-6 levels, preventing levels from getting too high and leading to increased breakdown of muscle tissue as a result. So a change in blood cytokine levels is not always what it seems without understanding the mechanisms behind it. Now back to curcumin.

Next, several studies have shown that chronically elevated IL-6 levels lead to a loss of muscle tissue over time and less growth from resistance exercise. Healthy peaks after training are associated with better growth outcomes while having low baseline levels. Curcumin can definitely decrease IL-6 from various health conditions and immune cells, keeping baseline levels low, but has not been shown to impact IL-6 blood levels after exercise reliably at all, thus it is highly unlikely to impact mRNA levels in the muscle as a result. Kind of sounds like what we want in this case. This can also help with recovery as there would be less IL-6 at the start of a workout to be absorbed into the muscle, another way to regulate total IL-6 levels post-wo.

IL-8 plays a role in repair, as it signals the accumulation of neutrophils to the site of an injury. IL-8 is also know as neutrophil chemotactic factor. It does this when released into the plasma after exercise. In the muscle it stimulates angiogenesis. IL-8 is only released into the plasma after exercise to signal neutrophils to infiltrate damaged tissues to produce inflammation, this helps clear away damaged tissue, there presence then signals a phase switch from prostaglandin (lipid compounds from arachidonic acid) to specialized pro-resolving mediator (lipid compounds primarily from epa/dha). The prolonging of neutrophil presence in muscle tissue after muscle damage can lead to what is known as post-wo secondary muscle damage as they will continue to breakdown tissues when unneeded, thankfully, curcumin can help signal the migration of neutrophils out of damaged tissues and help speed along this time line to help maintain the pros while minimizing the cons. Alongside with this, the inflammation produced by neutrophils signals the infiltration of macrophages. The specialized pro-resolving mediators signal for tissue repair, resolution of inflammation, production of anti-inflammatory interleukin-10 (IL-10), and for macrophages to phase switch from M1 to M2. M2 macrophages help with tissue repair and are associated with growth, likely because they increase the rate of recovery and thus less competition for signals related to growth. Increased phase switch and accumulation of M2 macrophages in muscle after exercise is actually one way the repeated bout effect works. If we do not have enough damage to warrant the release of IL-8 in plasma, then nothing down stream needs to happen as much. Curcumin decreases damage accumulated from resistance training by upregulating production of XIAP (inhibits muscle breakdown), thus we would expect to see less IL-8 in the blood after training, which we do reliably. But if the inhibiting of IL-8 in plasma is bad, we would also see a slower rate of repair, with curcumin we repeatedly see a decrease in the rate and severity of DOMS, declines in performance, and markers of muscle damage when curcumin is used in the days after muscle damaging resistance training. Curcumin also increases macrophage phase switch to M2, win-win for decreased damage and increased recovery rates.

Prostaglandins are associated with inflammatory processes, like cytokines are, they are of interest as their presence is linked with muscle repair and growth. They help signal protein synthesis. Except this is really only a function of PGF2a produced by the COX-1 and COX-2 activity that is increased in muscle tissue during resistance exercise. PGE2 is also produced by the same route, but it actually promotes muscle breakdown. Curcumin is very weak at inhibiting COX-1 and COX-2, it primarily works to regulate Nf-kB. It also inhibits (mPGES)-1 to specifically inhibit PGE2, not PGF2a. Its effects on Nf-kB, COX-1, and COX-2 are in relation to exercise is likely minimal at best since it does not impact protein synthesis or reliably decreases post-wo tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-a) or IL-6 plamsa levels.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) can generate damage that leads to the infiltration of immune cells like neutrophils and thus inflammation in the muscle as a result. We also discussed this is more a process of repair and not growth. ROS can also increase the ability of a muscle to contract leading to more satellite cell activation and IL-6 production by the muscle itself. This good for growth, but to much ROS can lead to much IL-6 and damage. ROS shares a similar reverse U-shaped curve to IL-6. The right amount can decrease damage accumulated from each contraction of a muscle, increases force output, increases rate of repair, and can signal hypertrophy. Curcumin does not blunt ROS directly but instead upregulates Nrf2. Nrf2 controls the rate of internal antioxidant production. Through this mechanism is regulated Nf-kB. This is one way curcumin regulates Nf-kB instead of strictly inhibiting it. Through its ability to upregulate Nrf2, curcumin can help manage ROS production to maximize the pros and mediate the cons. In fact, it can increase the rate of Nrf2 upregulation beyond exercise alone when combined.

To me, curcumin can prevent damage, improve recovery, and potentially improve muscle growth long-term as we can 1) do more work and 2) have less damage competing for adaptive signals. None of the proposed mechanisms of curcumin preventing growth play out mechanistically. I am egger to see some long-term data but I am highly optimistic.

Please let me know which key adaptive processes related to muscle growth and repair in the context of inflammation I missed and how curcumin negatively impacts it? I am open to learning more information.
 
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SweetLou321

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Add on:

Lastly, some lines of research indicate that curcumin can directly inhibit the activity of Nf-kB, a gene that regulates activity of COX-1 and COX-2 activity. We want these to be active so they can make PGF2a. However, the COX enzymes can be activated by more things then Nf-kB, such as IL-6. Additionally, increased Nf-kB from resistance training in humans may not always occur. Inhibition of Nf-kB has been shown to enhance myogenesis and muscle repair and regeneration. Inhibiting it may even enhance hypertrophy based on some research. It is not likely that Nf-kB is a key inflammatory regulator we want active around and after exercise. Curcumin effects via this potential mechanism doesn't even seem strong as it does not reliably decreased TNF-a or IL-6 plasma levels after exercise. It may be that this effect by curcumin does not even apply to muscle tissues.
 
Rocket3015

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You guys are digging deep !!
 

Resolve10

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Anyone have any experience with Curowhite? I have some Genius Collagen on the way (got super cheap intro) and it has the Curowhite...
 
sns8778

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We had mentioned several months ago that we were going to be doing a Curcumin product and have had people asking for updates so I wanted to update everyone.

We had a product ready to go into production (labels made and everything) and it was going to feature more than 1 branded type of Curcumin and then one of the branded ingredient companies decided that their Curcumin was too good to be used in a product with other branded ingredients from a competitor (They had originally agreed and been all for the idea). Huge hassle, waste of time, loss of label money, etc. I think they were basically hoping that we were going to use theirs and not their competitors but it worked out the opposite and we won't be using theirs.

So that's the reason for the delay but it brings us to an interesting question that I would love to get everyone's opinion on.

I'll go ahead and state that we definitely want to include Sabinsa's C3 Curcumin in the product so I would love to hear people's opinions and suggestions as to if there are any other branded versions or different types of Curcumin that they would like to see included with it.

Please feel free to reply in this thread or I'm making a separate thread for discussion purposes on this here:
https://anabolicminds.com/community/threads/curcumin-tell-sns-what-youd-like-to-see-in-a-curcumin-product.317906/
 
Rocket3015

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I believe this would make a Great addition to the companies line up.
 

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