Curcumin - Check it out

FloridaLady

Curcumin - Check it out

FloridaLady

I found this supplement/herb last year when my bc spread to my skin.  I started Avastin, Gemzar & Carbo. (chemo works for me about two tx and than stops)  When I notice my skin was not clearing up, I started using this and my skin started clear up and then completely went away while I finished the last of the chemo. I have continued to use it and the skin bc has not return to my doctor's shock.  There is some excellent research going on right now with this herb.  Do a search and see what you think. Before the nay sayers start... Yes,MD Anderson was doing research until the grant money ran out, but they still have "some" positive things to say.  I purchase from Agelesscures.com. 

Living in hope

Flalady

trigeek

Thats great news Fllady.. how did you use the curcumin, dosage  ? Did you go to a naturopath or did you just manage it yourself ?

Aylin

Yazmin

Dear FloridaLady:

Congratulations on your success with curcumin. This is amazing, indeed, but I am not surprised at all that the curcumin supplement would work where chemo failed. Hopefully, you will continue to get great relief from this and other natural treatments in the future.

Also, I don't know if you are aware of the controversy around Avastin for breast cancer, but this letter from Breast Cancer Action illustrates it eloquently. Breast Cancer Action is an advocacy group that does not take any money from any of the pharmaceutical companies. In the above-mentioned controversy, Breast Cancer Action and other advocacy groups were pitted against the FDA about the medicine-approval process currently in use, which does not seem to keep patients' best interest in mind.

http://bcaction.org/index.php?page=fda-letter-november-29-2007

-------------------------

Letter to the FDA Opposing Approval of Avastin-November 29, 2007

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Nicole Vesely
Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (HFD-21)
Food and Drug Administration
5600 Fishers Lane
Rockville, MD 20857

RE: Supplemental biologics license application (sBLA) 125085/91, AVASTIN (bevacizumab)

Dear Ms. Vesely:

Please provide a copy of this letter to the members the ODAC who will be meeting on December 5 to discuss the above-referenced application.

Breast Cancer Action (BCA), a national education and advocacy organization with over 18,000 members, believes that finding better treatments for metastatic breast cancer patients is a critically important field for developing new drugs. This is especially true in patients for whom all other treatment options have failed.

However, in order to give patients meaningful new options in treatment of breast cancer, we also believe that the FDA should not approve drugs for the treatment of the disease that have not shown either:

1. a survival benefit or
2. improved quality of life

In the case of bevacizumab, Breast Cancer Action has made numerous unsuccessful requests of the applicant for survival data from the taxpayer-funded trials, which are the basis of this application. As far as we know, there are no survival data from those trials. Instead, the application rests on time to progression of disease data as the basis for the requested approval.

Reliance on this surrogate endpoint is problematic for two reasons. First, as a recent review of the use of progression-free survival as an endpoint in cancer clinical trials demonstrates,  there is a great risk of bias in the reporting of results in the absence of standardization of assessment schedules for evaluating time to progression. Panegeas, KS et al., "When You Look Matters: The Effect of Assessment Schedule on Progression Free Survival," (J Natl Cancer Inst 2007: 99: 428-32). At a minimum, the FDA should review the limits of progression interval reported in the bevacizumab trials, and reject the application if there is any indication of the possibility of bias in the reporting of the trial results.

Second, and at least as important as the issue of bias in the reporting of trial results, is the ultimate validity of the surrogate endpoint of progression-free survival. Even if time to progression is accurately reported in the applicant's data, the endpoint is irrelevant to cancer patients if the surrogate marker has not been shown to be an accurate predictor of overall survival.

The utility of time to progression of disease as a surrogate marker for overall survival depends on its being tied to the actual end point of survival for which it substitutes. Absent data validating the predictive power of the time to progression endpoint, that endpoint is meaningless. Approval of the current application without this validation will make many women with breast cancer guinea pigs for the study of the long term effectiveness and safety of bevacizumab.

BCA looks forward to the day when we can say with confidence that a drug is effective at increasing survival for women with metastatic breast cancer. The FDA should not approve drugs that have not shown either a survival benefit or improved quality of life for breast cancer patients with metastatic disease. Applicants for drug approval should be required to evaluate true markers of efficacy so that women can have more meaningful treatment choices.

Respectfully submitted,

Barbara A. Brenner
Executive Director
Breast Cancer Action

Note: As a matter of policy, in order to avoid the fact or appearance of a conflict of interest, Breast Cancer Action does not accept funding from Genentech or from any other pharmaceutical or biotech company.

Rosemary44

I think you should let MD Anderson know about this.  You were under Dr. care so you have a witness to your cure.  It terrrible that they drop the ball on alternative treatments.   There is good news with alternative treatments.  Great news for you.

FloridaLady

Yazmin - Thank you for your support.  I'm very aware of drug trials and how they work.  I know some of them are a big joke other have value.  My thought was too possibly help my sisters's who would behind me. I did one with MD Anderson and researched many.  I've had 5 recurrences (in two yrs)with 53 nodes positive for cancer. (Thank God no mets and that very rare for triple negs)I did not have the luxury of waiting to educate myself about natural meds before jumping into treatment.  My cancer was aggressive and moving fast.  After my first mast. I was given 3 to 6 mths to live. (2 1/2 yrs ago)  Surgery (2 mast plus underarm again & chest wall) has kept my cancer under control long enough for me to get educated.  Have also done 7 diff. chemos for 26 tx in 16 mths.  As you see chemo does not work on me.  All that chemo was not a big deal to me.  I worked the whole time and lived alone and was just fine.  I also did natural during tx.  I have triple neg bc with no follow up stuff to keep it suppressed.  So I know I had to do something on my own.  Plus they know very little about triple negs. 

Trigeek - I take two pills three times daily.  I just meet a I lymphoma survivor that did 6 pills three times daily.  He called MDA and asked if they were still doing research and told him "no" funding ran out$$$.  But I'm sure a drug company had something that had $$$ attached to it.

Living on hope,

Flalady

Anonymous

I'm so happy for you, Flalady.  Geez, you ARE a WALKING MIRACLE!

I hope you continued NED!!!! 

We used to have a wonderful man who would come here and give us the research about drugs plus alternatives.  He told us what had been researched, provided evidence of that research, and told us how much of an alternative, according to research, to take.  He is not againt conventional therapy.  He has his own website, and is now helping other bc ladies on another website that's not his.  I was reading the other website, http://www.websitetoolbox.com/mb/nosurrenderbreastcancer?forum=96951 about tumeric.  He posted about a couple of brands that had been found to have high levels of lead it them plus some brands had less active compounds.  He got his info from ConsumerLab which I think I'll join.

I'm telling you this because I also take tumeric, but not in a high dose.  I'm also on Arimidex.  And I wanted to warn others who read this that not all supplements are created equal.  I'll have to check out your brand.

Again, thanks so much for coming here and telling us of this wonderful news.

Shirley

DGHoff

Flalady,

Thanks for sharing your wonderful news with all of us!  I've been taking curcumin during radiation, and I'm amazed at how well my skin is holding up! My doctor and the radiation techs tell me my skin looks great. I've done four weeks (only eight tx left!), and I don't really have any obvious sign on my skin that anything has happened to it. I figured I would burn like mad because I'm so fair and usually quite sensitive to anything. I don't know if the curcumin is the thing that is saving me, but I'm going to keep taking it! I take one capsule in the morning and one in the evening.

DeAnn  

TenderIsOurMight

Curcumin is felt too, to suppress a protein called breast cancer resistance protein. This protein is often seen in women who have had multiple chemotherapies, a category which I now also fall into having had AC and then Docetaxol for my adjacent treatment some almost 7 years ago. So, I use some of it.



While I do not supplement with tablets, I do sprinkle it on my food to my families amazement. Luckily the taste does not bother me, and in fact I seem to be enjoying it more than initially.



Curcumin can cause some tummy problems, some acid upset, and should be questioned in use if you have a history of gall bladder/biliary problems.



Since we are on the subject of Curcumin, here is a blog that is dedicated too it, yet I can not vouched for factual statements, etc.. Yet it seemed interesting:



http://margaret.healthblogs.org/antioxidants-and-chemotherapy/natural-cox-2-and-nf-kb-inhibitors/



Regarding MD Anderson, I believe l saw one study last time I checked (? a month ago) in solid tumors and curcumin. But research flows and stems by money/grants, so perhaps it's halted.



Here is an abstract of a just published article on Curcumin, which includes one of the MD Anderson researchers.



"Commentary Curcumin as ‘‘Curecumin’’: From kitchen to clinic



Ajay Goel a, Ajaikumar B. Kunnumakkara b, Bharat B. Aggarwal b,*

a Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Laboratory, Department of Internal Medicine, Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center and

Baylor Research Institute, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States

b Cytokine Research Laboratory, Departments of Experimental Therapeutics, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United States



Keywords:

Anticancer

Natural products

Curcumin



a b s t r a c t

Although turmeric (Curcuma longa; an Indian spice) has been described in Ayurveda, as a

treatment for inflammatory diseases and is referred by different names in different cultures,

the active principle called curcumin or diferuloylmethane, a yellow pigment present in

turmeric (curry powder) has been shown to exhibit numerous activities. Extensive research

over the last half century has revealed several important functions of curcumin. It binds to a

variety of proteins and inhibits the activity of various kinases. By modulating the activation

of various transcription factors, curcumin regulates the expression of inflammatory

enzymes, cytokines, adhesion molecules, and cell survival proteins. Curcumin also down-

regulates cyclin D1, cyclin E and MDM2; and upregulates p21, p27, and p53. Various

preclinical cell culture and animal studies suggest that curcumin has potential as an

antiproliferative, anti-invasive, and antiangiogenic agent; as a mediator of chemoresistance

and radioresistance; as a chemopreventive agent; and as a therapeutic agent in wound

healing, diabetes, Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary

disease, and arthritis. Pilot phase I clinical trials have shown curcumin to be safe even when

consumed at a daily dose of 12 g for 3 months. Other clinical trials suggest a potential

therapeutic role for curcumin in diseases such as familial adenomatous polyposis, inflam-

matory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, hypercholester-

emia, atherosclerosis, pancreatitis, psoriasis, chronic anterior uveitis and arthritis. Thus,

curcumin, a spice once relegated to the kitchen shelf, has moved into the clinic and may

prove to be ‘‘Curecumin’’.



My question: how come bright colored herbs and vegetables, fruits seem so anti-carcinogenic in general? It's something I always think of when shopping for my family and try to teach my kids.



KISS (Keep it simple ...)

Tender

PS: DGHoff, so very glad to hear your radiation is going well. Happy too to see your posts.Hope Spring will come soon your way too. T.

FloridaLady

Dehoff,

I wished I had know about this herb when I did rads.  They burnt me big time.

Guys I'm not NEDS yet. (or maybe I am)  I have a PET scan on March 6th.  I still have one dumb node that lighting up. 

Curcumin has chelation properties and can remove metals from the body.  So I'm having Tender help me find this info on curcumin that has metal in it.

Flalady