My readers are well aware how much I love curcumin for, oh so many reasons, and I’ve just found another one.
Let’s back up a bit. I know that curcumin is a powerful anti–inflammatory. And I know that inflammation is the underlying cause of a wide variety of terrible diseases, including heart disease, cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer’s.
I take curcumin every single day, without fail. Since I’ve written about curcumin so much and edited and published three books on it, you’d think I would have thought about curcumin when I began having terrible pain in my heel early last spring.
I’ve had plantar fasciitis, an overuse injury, before, so I immediately recognized that feeling that someone was driving a red-hot nail into my heel. Since I walk at least 10,000 steps a day and it was the beginning of gardening season, I was seriously hobbled.
I started doing all the stretching exercises I was taught the last time around, several years ago. I reluctantly ditched my favorite flip-flops for more arch supporting shoes. (OK, I bought a pair of arch supporting Oofos flip-flops, which I love.)
There was still no joy in Mudville.
Finally, I gave it up and made an appointment with my podiatrist.
After a $50 co-pay, he wanted to put me on a prescription NSAID. He never got a chance to mention which one he wanted to me to take. I’m sorry to say I interrupted him and asked if curcumin wouldn’t do just as well without the side effects of NSAIDS that include death from heart attack and stroke.
He hadn’t heard of curcumin, so I seized the moment to educate him. I was pleased that he was open minded. In fact, I dropped off a copy of the latest book I’ve published, Curcumin: Nature’s Answer to Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases by Dr. Ajay Goel, a cancer researcher at Baylor University.
He was impressed and recommended that I double my regular dosage of curcumin and let him know if that worked. I did and it worked like a charm!
I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t think of this myself, but I consider the chance to educate one doctor as an opportunity well worth the co-pay.
I know, this was a different kind of inflammation from the kind that causes diabetes, heart disease, cancer and more. This was acute inflammation in response to an injury and it was effectively addressed by my doubled dose of curcumin.
Long-term chronic inflammation, the kind that causes chronic diseases, is not painful and has no symptoms. That’s why it is so dangerous, since most of us don’t know we have it.
It was a good lesson for me, calling me back to my affection for curcumin (I always use a BCM-95 formulation, the kind scientifically proven to be the most absorbable), I’ve decided that it’s effects were so powerful on my sore heel that I will continue taking that double dose as an insurance policy against silent inflammation as well.
