Article Summary:
- Curcumin, widely known for its many health benefits, including its ability to support the body’s natural inflammatory response and strengthen immune function
- Curcumin’s poor natural absorption and bioavailability compromise its health-promoting benefits.
- Tesseract’s unique curcumin supplement formulation utilizes a proprietary nutrient delivery nanotechnology to achieve optimal solubility of curcumin.
Curcumin, the key metabolite derived from the underground stem of the turmeric plant, is well known for its health-promoting benefits. From mitigating oxidative stress to maintaining normal inflammatory responses in cells, curcumin promotes various health functions, including immune, gastrointestinal, and musculoskeletal health1,2. However, ingesting curcumin by itself does not lead to its associated health benefits because of its poor natural absorption, rapid metabolism, and rapid elimination from the body.
The unpleasant bitter taste of curcumin may be a barrier to achieving its use in supplement form. So, what are some of the most effective strategies to take curcumin as an oral supplement? This blog post answers several frequently asked questions about curcumin intake, how its bioavailability can be optimized, and why you should include an advanced curcumin supplement in your healthcare routine.
Challenges to Curcumin Absorption — An Overview
Although pure curcumin has immense health benefits, it is not chemically stable under physiological conditions. Before determining the effective ways to take curcumin, it is critical to understand the challenges to its absorption. The following are the causes of the poor absorption and bioavailability of curcumin:
- Because curcumin is a fat-soluble molecule, it does not absorb well in the gastrointestinal tract’s aqueous environment.
- Curcumin undergoes extensive first-pass metabolism in the intestinal mucosa and liver, which rapidly converts curcumin into inactive metabolites and further reduces its systemic availability.3
- Curcumin’s rapid elimination through the liver results in its poor bioavailability, even when ingested in high amounts4.
What are Some Effective Strategies to Take Curcumin as an Oral Supplement?
To achieve curcumin’s health-promoting benefits, the best way to take curcumin is to overcome its palatability and solubility challenges. Bioavailability-enhancers, such as piperine, and lipid addition, such as turmeric oleoresin and turmeric oil, can enhance the bioavailability of curcumin to a certain extent.
The following table highlights several ways to take curcumin as an oral supplement:
| How Should You Take Curcumin as an Oral Supplement? | ||
|---|---|---|
| Consuming curcumin with a meal rich in healthy fats | It is a traditional dietary practice of taking turmeric, containing curcumin, with digestible lipids, such as milk, or heating curcumin in oil and then mixing it with food. Since curcumin is lipophilic, consuming it with a meal containing healthy fats enhances its absorption 5. | |
| Combining curcumin with enhancing agents | Piperine is a major active component of black pepper and can increase the bioavailability of curcumin by 2,000 percent. 6 | |
| Taking curcumin supplement formulations | Free curcumin molecules naturally cluster together, hindering cellular absorption. In contrast, curcumin formulations containing powder nanoparticles and loaded emulsions display higher cellular uptake and bioaccessability 7,8. | |
Including An Advanced Curcumin Supplement Formulation in Your Healthcare Routine
When considering taking a curcumin supplement, it is best to choose a formulation that enhances its absorption and bioavailability. Although curcumin is chemically unstable in the gastrointestinal environment, tetrahydrocurcumin, an active metabolite of curcumin, is both more stable and more water-soluble than curcumin. As a result, tetrahydrocurcumin displays enhanced absorption and bioavailability, making it more effective than curcumin9.
TetraCumin® is an innovative curcumin supplement developed by Tesseract Medical Research. It contains the bioactive tetrahydrocurcumin for helping to maintain a healthy inflammatory response and for promoting joint and muscle health.*
Tesseract’s proprietary CyLoc® – DexKey® nutrient delivery system further enhances tetrahydrocurcumin’s absorption, enveloping each tetrahydrocurcumin molecule in its smart delivery system to protect its integrity and to deliver each molecule at the desired point in the gastrointestinal tract.
The targeted delivery of nutrient molecules results in unprecedented absorption and enables micro-dosing, achieving faster physiological responses with lower amounts of the active ingredients. The targeted delivery, unprecedented absorption, and micro-dosing of the active ingredient make TetraCumin one of the best ways to achieve curcumin’s positive health outcomes.
The power of Tesseract supplements lies in enhancing palatability, maximizing add “solubility, “absorption and bioavailability, and micro-dosing multiple nutrients in a single, highly effective dose. Shop products on our website and learn more about how they can support your immune function and musculoskeletal health.*
References:
1Dehzad MJ, et al. Cytokine. 2023;164:156144. doi:10.1016/j.cyto.2023.156144
3Pan-On S, Dilokthornsakul P, Tiyaboonchai W. Trends in advanced oral drug delivery system for curcumin: A systematic review. J Control Release. 2022;348:335-345. doi:10.1016/j.jconrel.2022.05.048
4Pan-On S, Dilokthornsakul P, Tiyaboonchai W. Trends in advanced oral drug delivery system for curcumin: A systematic review. J Control Release. 2022;348:335-345. doi:10.1016/j.jconrel.2022.05.048
5Schönenberger KA, et al. The influence of food matrices on the bioavailability of curcuminoids from a dried colloidal turmeric suspension: a randomized, crossover, clinical trial. Food Funct. 2025;16(2):774-784. Published 2025 Jan 20. doi:10.1039/d4fo03414g
6Shoba G, et al. Planta Medica vol. 64,4 (1998):353-356. doi:10.1055/s-2006-957450
7Nelson KM, et al. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry vol. 60,5 (2017):1620-1637. doi:10.1021/acs.jmedchem.6b00975
8Luo H, Li Z, Yao M, McClements DJ, Xiao H. Impact of excipient emulsions made from different types of oils on the bioavailability and metabolism of curcumin in gastrointestinal tract. Food Chem. 2022;370:130980. doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2021.130980
9Zhou M, Li R, Hua H, et al. The role of tetrahydrocurcumin in disease prevention and treatment. Food Funct. 2024;15(13):6798-6824. Published 2024 Jul 1. doi:10.1039/d3fo05739a
