Hi, today I wrote a post for my blog on this topic: when is the best time of day to take our supplements? I'd never thought about it, but it makes sense that our biological clock would have a lot to do with how well (or how poorly) we absorb the substances we imbibe. In my case, of course, I am thinking specifically about curcumin. Here are some parts of my blog post:

"[....] Malignant cells are more susceptible to certain chemo drugs at different times of day. The reason I found this idea fascinating is because I wonder if it applies to curcumin and other non toxic substances. I clearly remember Prof. Aggarwal telling me that the best time to take curcumin is early in the morning. He didn’t say why. Also, one of my blog readers takes some of her supplements, I forget the details, late at night when cancer cells may be more vulnerable. I confess that this sounded a bit nuts to diffident and sceptical me when I first read about it, but is now beginning to make sense. [...]  For more info, see this article in “Slate.” (see: http://tinyurl.com/267jrs). Even something that we imbibe almost without thinking, i.e. aspirin, is best taken in the evening, when it will do “less damage to the stomach lining” than in the morning. [...] The article continues: “Despite this evidence of variation, drug research is almost always done during daylight hours, when the humans leading the studies are awake and alert. And in the animal testing stage, it’s almost always done with mice and rats, which are nocturnal—the middle of our day is the middle of their night. This can lead to gross misestimations of the effectiveness and toxicity of a drug intended for humans.” How about that for a shocker? What if certain toxic or undesirable side effects from drugs, perhaps even from curcumin itself (some of my correspondents have reported diarrhea and stomach upsets, for instance), could be AVOIDED simply by modifying our supplement/drug-taking schedules? Why, that is absolutely BRILLIANT! And WHY doesn’t the FDA focus on such crucial issues? Well, the “Slate” article provides the obvious answer to that question: money! I quote again from the article, a good easy read, I highly recommend it: “Modern drug development generally assumes that the body maintains a stable internal state. To that end, many prescription drugs are designed to be taken in equal amounts at regular intervals to keep a patient’s drug levels steady. The problem is that a growing body of research suggests that our bodies are not constant. Instead, nearly every physiological process oscillates with our internal circadian rhythms. The body’s temperature, immune function, and hormone levels all partly depend on whether it’s night or day, or sometime in between. Meanwhile, many diseases also have daily rhythms, with symptoms more severe at certain times. The body’s sensitivity to time of day means that a drug proven safe to take in the morning may not be safe at night, or that a dose that works at 8 p.m. may be too small at 8 a.m.” Perhaps this is something that everyone knew, but I certainly did not, and I think it's fascinating. Potentially CRUCIAL.

You can read the rest (it's a long post, and I didn't want to post the whole thing here), if you want, on my blog: http://margaret.healthblogs.org/ I am beginning to think that perhaps I should take most of my curcumin right before bed, since at night our bodies sort of slow down compared to daytime, and perhaps I would absorb more curcumin at that time. Any thoughts on this?

Margaret

Florence, Italy