November 14 2007 post: As happens frequently, I was looking up material on a completely different substance today when somehow I came across a study (full study available here: http://tinyurl.com/2w7ort) co-authored by Prof. Aggarwal and published in Carcinogenesis in 2003, with the title: “Curcumin (diferuloylmethane) down-regulates cigarette smoke-induced NF-kB activation through inhibition of IkBa kinase in human lung epithelial cells: correlation with suppression of COX-2, MMP-9 and cyclin D1.”

Okay, we all know that cigarette smoke (CS) can cause all sorts of health problems, including cancers of the larynx, oral cavity and pharynx, esophagus, pancreas, kidney, bladder and lung. [ ] CS is a complex chemical mixture containing thousands of different compounds, of which 100 are known carcinogens, co-carcinogens, mutagens and/or tumor promoters. Known carcinogens, meaning there probably are MORE than 100.

Well, without going into too many details, it turns out that curcumin may well counteract the damaging effects of CS, and the study ends with a suggestion to conduct clinical trials “of curcumin as a chemopreventive agent in former and current cigarette smokers. Well, why am I surprised? After all, curcumin protects us from radiation, pesticides and dioxin! What’s a little cigarette smoke in comparison?!!! I admit, though, that this is not a topic I wish to research at length, even though I saw that there are other studies on this topic online, such as this one, published in March 2007 in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics: http://tinyurl.com/yvgoa7. But I have other topics that need to be researched, so I shut my eyes and ignored most of those references.