Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
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Myeloma – Nutrition, Antioxidants
In 15 human studies, 3,738 patients who took non-prescription antioxidants and other nutrition actually had increased survival.
Dear David- Is there any research about whether nutrition in general, sugar, foods, wine, etc. specifically, are not good for someone trying to get into remission with multiple myeloma?
What is your opinion? Eric
Eric-
The issue of nutrition (inflammation, angiogenesis, antioxidation) and its possible effect on cancer, any cancer, at any stage, is debated with research on both sides. Multiple Myeloma Cancer Coaching clients often relate how their oncologist told them to eat anything they wanted as their diet made no difference…
Certain specific foods such as alcohol, animal fat or processes sugar are pretty well researched and pretty well established at being bad for human health and a precursor for multiple myeloma and a host of chronic diseases.
My personal opinion is that yes, nutrition can have a dramatic effect on MM patients and their
- response to chemotherapy
- degree of adverse events
- progression-free and overall survival
The challenge with this general, overall belief is that it is not well-studied and not-well established. There are specific studies about specific foods, herbs, or spices being anti-MM or anti-cancer.
My personal experience is that nutrition is one of several lifestyle therapies that helps me maintain complete remission from my MM.
Curcumin is the single best example of nutrition that helps us MMers get into remission and then stay there. Dozens of studies document the anti-MM properties of curcumin.
Further, curcumin is the trifecta of nutrition being an
- antioxidant,
- anti-inflammatory and
- anti-angiogenic.
The only trick to keep in mind about curcumin is that it is famously difficult to absorb into your blood. Scroll down the page to read about the most bioavailable curcumin formulas.
The MM CC nutrition guide summarizes what I do nutritionally speaking and the MM CC antioxidant guide summarizes the research on the issue of antioxidants (both food and nutritional supplements) before, during and after chemotherapy and radiation.
When I talk about nutrition I am including wine. For the record I have 2-3 glasses of wine a week. I drank a lot more alcohol in my life leading up to my diagnosis in ’94, stopped for a time (4-5 years) and then returned to a small amount of wine weekly. Research into moderate wine consumption varies from “it’s good for you!” to “all alcohol is toxic!” I go with red wine containing small amounts of resveratrol and therefore helps me maintain remission.
Thanks,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Recommended Reading:
- Multiple Myeloma-Toxic/Non-Toxic Angiogenesis Inhibitors
- Living With Multiple Myeloma-Tom Brokaw
- Biochemical Relapse in Multiple Myeloma- To Treat or Not To Treat?
The Most BioAvailable Curcumin Formulas
“Based on a review of these studies, it is evident that better bioavailability of formulated curcumin (CU) products is mostly attributed to improved solubility, stability, and possibly low first-pass metabolism”
A search of the Pubmed database for the word curcumin yields 601 studies spaning health topics from multiple myeloma and colorectal cancer, to chemotherapies that synergizes with CU, to Alzheimer’s Disease, arthritis and more. Based on years of reading studies and personal accounts, I think it is safe to say that CU supplementation is safe and relatively inexpensive.
I have read about myeloma patients taking daily doses of CU from 400 milligrams to 8 grams (1000 milligrams = 1 gram). By almost any measure, CU is a safe, inexpensive wonder drug.
The only challenge is that CU is famously difficult to absorb in the body. In other words, a person has to mix curcumin with some sort of fat (coconut oil, chocolate, etc.) or take a brand of curcumin capsule that is already formulated to be more “bioavailable” in order to derive the full benefit of CU.
The study linked and exerpted below reviews different formulations of CU. The study itself lists the three most bioavailable formulation/brand of CU and I’ve added an excerpt from a further review from Consumerlab.com that lists four additional bioavailable brands of CU.
Recommended Reading:
- CU versus Turmeric as Cancer Therapy-What’s the Difference?
- CU Suppresses Colon Cancer, Enhances Chemotherapy
- Prostate Cancer: CU Curbs Prostate Cancer Metastases, Study Shows
- CU vs. cancer: The scientific evidence continues to pile up
Curcumin
“CU is a bright yellow chemical produced by some plants. It is the principal curcuminoid of turmeric (Curcuma longa), a member of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. It is sold as an herbal supplement, cosmetics ingredient, food flavoring, and food coloring.[1]“
Bioavailable curcumin formulations: A review of pharmacokinetic studies in healthy volunteers.
“Curcumin is a widely studied natural compound which has shown tremendous in vitro therapeutic potential. Despite that, the clinical efficacy of the native CU is weak due to its low bioavailability and high metabolism in the gastrointestinal tract. During the last decade, researchers have come up with different formulations with a focus on improving the bioavailability of curcumin. As a result, a significant number of bioavailable curcumin-based formulations were introduced with the varying range of enhanced bioavailability.
The purpose of this review is to collate the published clinical studies of CU products with improved bioavailability over conventional (unformulated) CU. Based on the literature search, 11 curcumin formulations with available human bioavailability and pharmacokinetics data were included in this review. Further, the data on clinical study design, analytical method, pharmacokinetic parameters and other relevant details of each formulation were extracted.
Based on a review of these studies, it is evident that better bioavailability of formulated curcumin products is mostly attributed to improved solubility, stability, and possibly low first-pass metabolism. The review hopes to provide a quick reference guide for anyone looking information on these bioavailable curcumin formulations.
Based on the published reports,
exhibited over 100-fold higher bioavailability relative to reference unformulated CU. Suggested mechanisms accounting for improved bioavailability of the formulations and details on the bioanalysis methods are also discussed.”
According to Consumerlab.com:
“Novasol has the highest bioavailability (185 x compared to unforumulated CU), followed by Curcuwin (136 x), Longvida (100 x), Meriva (48 x), BCM-95 (27 x), Curcumin C3 Complex + Bioperene (20 x), and then Theracumin (16 x).”