This morning I was tidying up my bookcase when I came across my 2006 calendar…and noticed that I began taking curcumin on January 16^th 2006. Wow. That was three years PLUS 2 days ago. Oh bother, I missed my third year curcumin anniversary by two days! How did that happen?

Going through the calendar reminded me of all the things that happened to me in 2006. In addition to “discovering” curcumin, I became a permanent citizen of Italy. So, in many ways, 2006 was a magnificent year. But in others, it was not so…magnificent.

My next door neighbour, a friendly, cheerful and kind man in his early 50s, had been diagnosed in the spring of 2005 with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). He began doing chemotherapy straight away, within a week or so of his diagnosis. That summer, he almost died not once but twice…not from the leukemia but from a toxic reaction to the drugs. On both occasions, his wife was told that he wouldn’t make it through the night. But make it he did…each time.

In the fall, his doctors surprisingly (from my current viewpoint) recommended that he go ahead and have an allogeneic stem cell transplant. He agreed. A donor was found in Germany, and the transplant took place in late January of 2005 or early February of 2006. I remember that he was still home when I told him about curcumin. He was interested and said he might consider taking it after the transplant.

That never happened.

He had a toxic reaction to one of the anti-rejection drugs, cyclosporine, as I recall. I will spare you the details of his long agony. During that dreadful period, I spent a lot of time with his family, trying to be cheerful and encouraging. I didn’t go visit him in the hospital (only his wife and children were allowed to see him under extremely restricted circumstances), but I remember that he phoned me on one of his rare “good” days. That was our last conversation.

He died on April 19^th, 2006. Exactly one month later, on May 19^th, I came down with pleurisy (I came close to dying, myself…took me months to recover).

Looking back, 2006 was not an easy year. But I survived. And I found curcumin. I just wish that Massimo were here, too…taking curcumin and helping me with my research (he was a biologist, an enthusiastic plant expert…)…eh, today’s post brings back painful memories.

To end on a more cheerful note…on this anniversary, a special note of gratitude goes to Prof. Bharat Aggarwal who works at the MD Anderson Cancer Research Center in Texas. Without his encouragement, I might not have tried the amazing yellow-orange powder…

Very busy days. No time to do research, no time to post. My cytogenetics draft is driving me mad, so I have set it aside for a few days, as my father wisely taught me to do. (The only problem with that is that I now have a HUGE file filled to the brim with unfinished or unpublished drafts…eh!) At any rate, today I will address another issue, one that has popped up again recently.

Last month I received a message from a myeloma list friend informing me that she began taking curcumin because her IgA was steadily increasing. On curcumin, she wrote, her IgA was still increasing but at a lower rate, which she found encouraging.

At that point she was taking three grams of curcumin a day. When she tried increasing to four grams, she noticed that, and I quote, yellow dye was being excreted from my skin. I noticed it when I dried my face and there was yellow on the towel. I also noticed that my nails were yellow. I know you have been taking curcumin at a higher dose for quite a while and wondered if you had that side effect and whether it bothered you if it did. In any case, I’ve reduced the dose to 2 grams a day and at that dose it seems OK–no yellow nails.

Last year, a blog reader/dear friend also reported a similar problem with the colour yellow. He was sweating yellow during the night…to the point of staining a brand new set of sheets.

Then, just a couple of days ago, I received a contact message from a blog reader informing me that her husband seems to be turning yellow. It was time for me to look into the matter.

The first of the three cases may be connected with the actual handling of curcumin, although my friend didn’t think so. But, in addition to being used for many medicinal purposes in India, turmeric (from which curcumin is extracted) is also used as a textile dye. Very true, curcumin stains like crazy. Whenever I handle the yellow-orange powder, I stain everything I touch. No matter how careful I am, curcumin always “outsmarts” me. My hands turn yellow. Everything I touch or wear turns yellow. And one day, jumping onto the kitchen counter just as I was measuring out my daily amount of curcumin powder, Piccolo, my male cat, managed to stain the white underside of his paws. Eh, he didn’t care for that at all and almost licked himself into a trance. His paws remained yellow for a few days…he was very upset.

Well, I finally did an online search to see if I could come up with an explanation of sorts. Almost immediately, I found a thread that dealt with this problem. Super!, I thought. Someone reported that Within 8 hours of taking one Curcumin capsule, however, the fingers on my right hand will begin to yellow along with small yellow splotches on the palm. The real strange thing is, my mother developes the exact same yellowing on her right hand. I know it’s not from handling the capsules, so does anyone have any clue what is causing this?

Other thread readers offered various suggestions and ideas, but then, at the end, the person who had introduced the yellowing topic confessed: Let the truth be told. I am a moron. Yep, it was just from the excess powder that was outside the capsules. It was even all around the top of the bottle, so simply opening it would get a small amount of the residue on my hand. I also know why I only noticed it in the morning. My apartment is lit with “yellow” light so I couldn’t see it. It was only until I went out on my deck in the morning with my coffee that I could notice the staining!

I reported this story because I thought it might be useful: even curcumin capsules can stain your fingers yellow. It still doesn’t seem to explain my three blog readers’ “yellowing” experiences…

In conclusion, all I can say is that I have never had inexplicable yellow sweat, yellow skin or yellow anything… The yellowing of my hands, face and clothes has always been caused by my own carelessness.

I am puzzled, I confess. I thought that perhaps those affected by yellowing should have their liver function tested (always a good idea, as part of a regular check-up)…I should note, though, that curcumin has a protective effect on the liver. I give up.

Any other thoughts?

When I got home from work today, I found a message from a myeloma list friend (thanks, LB!) concerning a remarkable tale of friendship: http://tinyurl.com/7t2tzr Wow…check it out…

Ever since I realized the implications of my MGUS and then SMM (well, to be precise, my 2005 bone marrow biopsy result talks about “multiple myeloma,” not “smoldering myeloma”…) diagnoses, I have been interested in studies about the progression of these two conditions to actively malignant myeloma.

A blog reader (thank you!) must have been reading my mind. He recently sent me a heap of studies dealing mainly with the issue of genetic codes in MGUS and myeloma, and that of the progression from MGUS to MM.

Even though it’s way too early to get into it all, one of these studies told me something that I didn’t know: chromosomal abnormalities, or translocations, occur in MGUS, too. So much for (my) believing that only myeloma folks developed wacky genes…At this point, though, I should reassure those with MGUS that a few abnormal chromosomes doesn’t mean that progression to myeloma is inevitable. Oh no, not at all. As I mentioned, though, it’s too early to get into it.

I just wanted to explain my silence, I guess. In the past couple of days I have been poring over piles of statistics, looking at graphs that make little or no sense to me, wading through discussions on translocations, not just those concerning the infamous chromosome 13 (deletion/non deletion), etc…and yes, I admit that it was all terribly overwhelming at first, but then I decided that I simply would try to understand what I possibly can…and set the rest aside, at least for the time being. After all, I cannot become an expert cytogeneticist overnight… As for posting a few words about these studies, well, I will give it a try. Soon, I hope.

In my free time, I have been following the interesting GMO (etc.) discussions on Fanatic Cook’s blog (I have a link here to her blog, just scroll down my Pages almost to the end). Among other items, she has a few interesting posts on genetically modified soy… I must say that I am full of admiration for this researcher, from whom I have learned so much…please visit her blog whenever you have a spare moment or two, you won’t regret it, I think. Here’s the general link: http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/

Yesterday my niece sent me the link to a video titled “An engineer’s guide to cats.” Amusing, see: http://tinyurl.com/9olzw8 (the mystery of today’s post title is therein revealed…)

And then, as if I had nothing better to do yesterday, hah!, I began watching a few YouTube cat videos…couldn’t help it, too cute. And I found the following:

Scuba cat: http://tinyurl.com/9n7tok Quite an amazing story, but certainly something that I would never try with my own cats!:

How to break up a cat/kitten fight (hehe): http://tinyurl.com/2z5beb You have to watch the whole thing…this particular clip was featured on the Jay Leno show.

Here is a collage of funny or cute cat clips: http://tinyurl.com/633j6y I had already seen many of them, like the cat chasing the bear, but hadn’t seen the tiny black kitten falling asleep (oooh so cute!), the cat playing ping pong and the cat jumping on water…and how about the cat arranging itself inside a glass? Or the one squeezing itself out of a bottle?

Watching all these cute cat videos made me want to rush out and buy a video camera to take films of my own cats, whose antics are certainly comparable in funniness and cuteness…Priscilla, who loves to drink water from the bathroom tap (see photo) and cuddle under my sweater (luckily, only during the cold weather months!) with only her tail peeking out….Peekaboo and Piccolo, who answer all my questions with their own meaningful meows and peculiar trills and chirps (note: they ignore me if I don’t use the correct question intonation…)…Puzzola, who loves getting (or stuffing herself) inside cardboard boxes of any size. If it’s a small box, she will stick her head inside and pretend not to notice that the rest of her body is totally visible.

Oh, and Piccolo and Peekaboo bump their foreheads to mine (Piccolo gives me such forceful bumps sometimes that he makes me take a step backwards). And all the funny and acrobatic jumping and playing and fighting that goes on in our house, usually instigated by Peekaboo, the fearless imp (I should have known I was in for some serious “trouble” when I first set eyes on her, about one and a half years ago, see photo)…the list goes on…and on…

Happy Birthday to one of my dear blogging friends! You know who you are! 🙂

I don’t remember who sent this bit of important health news to me…well, no matter. I thought I would publish it today since it is closely related to my recent post on carbohydrates. It gives advice on what we (=especially native English speakers) should eat and why…

CONCERNED ABOUT TOO MANY CARBS IN YOUR DIET?

For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

I have tried to do some research in this period, but inspiration has been eluding me…well, okay, I admit that there has been another reason for my not having posted in the past few days. Stefano is home for the holidays, and we have been spending as much time together as possible. We have even been straightening up the house…anything, as long as we are together. And, since he has a nasty cough and cold, we have also been following Peekaboo’s wise example (photo taken yesterday morning).

Well, the holiday is almost over (sigh)…just a few more days…

The first time I heard of these things was when I moved back to the U.S. in the early 1980s. I grew up in Italy, you see, and my Italian friends never made resolutions. What we did on New Year’s Eve was get together for a never-ending feast with all sorts of wonderful homemade food and play traditional and very noisy New Year’s games. At midnight, we kissed, toasted to the new year and had a bite of all the traditional foodstuffs that are thought to bring good luck and wealth. Then, more games, more fun and laughter, more toasting to the new year. But I remember no talk of resolutions.

At any rate, for my first few years in the U.S., I thought that New Year’s resolutions were simply brilliant, so every year I did my best to make a list filled with good intentions. I soon realized that it was pointless. I would simply never do this and would certainly never ever do that. In the end, I didn’t see the point of promising to do something that I knew I wouldn’t get around to doing, so I gave up. It would have been terribly two-faced of me…hmmm, and as it turns out, two-faced is exactly right…

Yesterday I became slightly curious about the origin of New Year resolutions, so I looked it up. It would seem that this tradition dates back to 153 B.C., when the Roman god Janus, the guardian of doors and gates, of beginnings and endings, was placed at the head of the calendar.

The peculiarity about Janus was that he had two faces (aha!), one facing forward, one backwards, so that when he walked into a room, I read on one website, he could say both “hello” and “goodbye.” Hehe, fancy that… At any rate, because of his ability to see into the past with one face and into the future with the other, Janus became the symbol of New Year’s resolutions. So the idea that we all get a fresh start at the beginning of the new year is nothing new, since this is also the time when ancient Romans would ask for forgiveness from their enemies and vow to live in peace…

There are a number of good luck rituals in the Italian New Year festivities. As I mentioned last year, you have to wear something red (red underwear sales soar in this period). You also have to eat lentils during dinner on December 31^st (we eat lentils on January 1^st, too, to cover all bases). And don’t forget, quello che si fa il primo dell’anno si fa tutto l’anno, that is, what you do on the first day of the year you will do for the rest of the year…so plan only FUN stuff for tomorrow and under no circumstances bring out the vacuum cleaner!

Well, whether we make lists of resolutions/follow any superstitious rituals or not, may Janus beam down on all of us with both faces during 2009…and shower us with good health and happiness. Felice Anno Nuovo!!!