Are the health benefits of turmeric too good to be true ?

By Maritza Moulite, CNN

Updated 0752 GMT (1552 HKT) August 7, 2018

What is turmeric?

Turmeric is a popular spice similar to ginger, known for its bright yellow color and use in curry powders and mustards. Also called "Indian saffron," the plant grows across India, other areas of Asia and Central America. Turmeric flavors a range of dishes, is a vital component of certain religious rituals and has been used for medicinal purposes for nearly 4,000 years.

"There are plenty of studies currently being done but already good evidence that turmeric can help control knee pain from arthritis as well as decrease the likelihood of a heart attack after bypass surgery," said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent.

Turmeric is one of many plants used in ayurveda, a traditional South Asian system of medicine, according to the National Institutes of Health. It is used to treat issues such as breathing problems, rheumatism, fatigue and pain.

"There's a distinction that's very important to make between turmeric, which is the plant and the spice, and what people often study, which is the curcumin, which is the proposed active constituent in turmeric," Hopp said. "And even curcumin, as it's usually sold or researched, is not a single compound. It's usually a collection of three or four compounds that are called curcuminoids, collectively."

The exact amount varies, but the turmeric root contains up to 5% of these curcuminoids typically, the National Institutes of Health says.

A gap between theory and practice

Extracting the curcumin and translating its power into a successful treatment is still a major challenge for researchers, experts say. There is epidemiologic evidence that people who eat a diet rich in turmeric can potentially attribute their substantial health benefits to the spice, Hopp said, citing a lower incidence of colon cancer in the Indian subcontinent.

"But it's very difficult to sort of project what you see in terms of an activity in a cell to what's going to actually happen in the human," he added. "There's a sort of a disconnect between what appears to be a lot of very promising activity in vitro, which is just in the cells. And contrast that with where it's been studied in clinical trials as humans, where there's been virtually no evidence of benefits."

One reason for that disconnect is that apart from turmeric, curcumin has biological properties that make it poorly bioavailable: It is rapidly metabolized and excreted, and very little of it gets absorbed into the body. The chemical doesn't make it to the places where it could be of help.

The context in which turmeric is traditionally used is important as well, Hopp said. Black pepper is often found alongside turmeric. Piperine, the substance that gives pepper its bite, increases curcumin's bioavailability.

"It keeps the door open," Hopp said. "As things go into and out of cells, piperine is sort of like a doorstop that allows things to go in and out of the cells much more readily."