An organic blend of turmeric and black pepper from Iswari — a pairing that exists for one specific and genuinely interesting reason.
Curcumin has a bioavailability problem. It is the yellow pigment in turmeric and the compound almost all the research concerns, and on its own it is absorbed extremely poorly: most of what you swallow is metabolised in the gut wall and liver and excreted before it ever reaches the bloodstream. This is the central difficulty with turmeric research, and it is why laboratory results have translated so patchily into human trials.
Piperine is the reason black pepper is in the jar. The compound that makes pepper hot inhibits the enzymes that dispose of curcumin — principally glucuronidation in the gut and liver — so the curcumin survives long enough to be absorbed. The effect is large: a well-known study reported a roughly twenty-fold increase in curcumin bioavailability when piperine was added. This is real pharmacology, and it is the single best-founded thing about turmeric supplementation.
Which is also why there is a caution attached. Piperine does not only inhibit the enzymes that clear curcumin — it inhibits drug-metabolising enzymes and transporters more broadly, including CYP3A4 and P-glycoprotein. That means it can raise blood levels of medicines that rely on those pathways, which covers a great many common drugs. If you take regular medication, this blend is worth mentioning to a pharmacist. It is precisely because piperine works that it is worth being careful with.
Two further cautions. Turmeric may increase bleeding risk with anticoagulants, and should be avoided before surgery. And high-dose turmeric supplements have been associated with rare cases of liver injury — rare, but documented, and a reason to stick to culinary quantities rather than heroic ones.
The EU authorises no health claims for turmeric or curcumin, and we make none. It is a superb ingredient: use it in fat, with pepper, in food.
Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.
Iswari
Dragon Superfoods
