Vaping Turmeric

[Asklipia]

I have found this extremely efficient for clearing the sinuses, lungs and other places.
My husband has devised this as a way to help curcumin work directly on the lymph, bypassing the digestive system.
Very cheap and pleasant too.
It is very soothing apart from killing a few bugs in the lymph and in the sinuses (which includes behind the eyes if you move the vapour around).

For this your need real turmeric root. Which you first deep freeze. When it comes out of this deep freeze, its texture is destroyed and you can more or less crush it to extract a lot of the water. Then in the tepid oven to dry it.
Shazam!!!! You can put it in a jar, you have real dried turmeric with the curcumins and tetrahydrocurcumins still in. Not the case of course it you buy it already dried, it has been washed with dry cleaning liquid, like they do for instant coffee and the oils are sold separately to make supplements and spices.
Careful to keep it in the dark, curcumins are affected by light.

For vaping, the method I found brought out the greatest variety of useful curcumins (and please do not ask how I measured this) is here: http://www.vapecritic.com/vaporizers/volcano/
I agree with that guy, this is the Bentley of vaporizers.

The nice thing is, we rarely use it!!!!! No sinus trouble I found could resist our new therapy.
I suspect this also cures the lungs and reaches even down below.

And it is best to go in the sun afterwards, I noticed it works even better if the curcumin is affected by light INSIDE your body.
Good luck!
Asklipia

 

[Sherpa]

Awesome innovation, very cool! Never heard of vaping other herbs than Cannabis.

 

[Asklipia]

Just a little bit of dried turmeric is enough, ground in a pepper milll.

You can vape anything you like! No combustion. No filler, no capsule.

 

[Ayaju]

@Asklipia Wow, gotta try this! When you say "deep freeze" I hope you don't mean a deep freezer. Will a regular refrigerator work? Judy

 

[Asklipia]

@Asklipia Wow, gotta try this! When you say "deep freeze" I hope you don't mean a deep freezer. Will a regular refrigerator work? Judy

Just a refrigerator that will make it frozen like an ice cube. No need to go much lower than freezing point, it is only to destroy the structure of the cells so that your turmeric unfrozen gets all soggy and you can press out a lot of the water.
Otherwise it will be impossible to dry it in the oven.

 

[Asklipia]

A little bit only in the Volcano. You want to inhale something soothing, not to get more irritation.
Enjoy!
Once a day is enough. After a few days the effects start to last. I clears the brain.

 

[Ayaju]

@Asklipia Bet this will prevent Alzheimer's! Wouldn't that be something?
So, this does require purchasing a vaporizer? Those are expensive!

 

[Asklipia]

@Asklipia Bet this will prevent Alzheimer's! Wouldn't that be something?
So, this does require purchasing a vaporizer? Those are expensive!

True. But you save on curcumin supplements! Never know if they are consistently the same even if you found a good one.
And you can use it with other herbs.

 

[brenda]

I have found this extremely efficient for clearing the sinuses, lungs and other places.
My husband has devised this as a way to help curcumin work directly on the lymph, bypassing the digestive system.
Very cheap and pleasant too.
It is very soothing apart from killing a few bugs in the lymph and in the sinuses (which includes behind the eyes if you move the vapour around).

For this your need real turmeric root. Which you first deep freeze. When it comes out of this deep freeze, its texture is destroyed and you can more or less crush it to extract a lot of the water. Then in the tepid oven to dry it.
Shazam!!!! You can put it in a jar, you have real dried turmeric with the curcumins and tetrahydrocurcumins still in. Not the case of course it you buy it already dried, it has been washed with dry cleaning liquid, like they do for instant coffee and the oils are sold separately to make supplements and spices.
Careful to keep it in the dark, curcumins are affected by light.

For vaping, the method I found brought out the greatest variety of useful curcumins (and please do not ask how I measured this) is here: http://www.vapecritic.com/vaporizers/volcano/
I agree with that guy, this is the Bentley of vaporizers.

The nice thing is, we rarely use it!!!!! No sinus trouble I found could resist our new therapy.
I suspect this also cures the lungs and reaches even down below.

And it is best to go in the sun afterwards, I noticed it works even better if the curcumin is affected by light INSIDE your body.
Good luck!
Asklipia

Hmmmmm, l don't consider that a good thing to be barely using it after the high price of it, that is of course after the initial treatment.

 

[leela]

What a great idea. Too bad the vaporizer is so pricey

Added bonus to the freezing: could get you through the turmeric off-season.

 

[Asklipia]

Added bonus to the freezing: could get you through the turmeric off-season.

Just a few days in the freezer are enough. Then it is dry and in a jar, so no problem to keep it during the off-season.
You need very very little every time.
We used it for a couple of months every day, then we felt so well that we stopped. When we meet a lot of people or when we feel the need for extra turmeric (more than what we put in the food) or a vague feeling of inflammation coming back, we immediately take a vape of turmeric.
This winter lots of people that we knew got pneumonia and even died in hospital. Maybe I am wrong but I feel the vaping has protected us, we were fine every day.

 

[leela]

Just a few days in the freezer are enough. Then it is dry and in a jar, so no problem to keep it during the off-season.
You need very very little every time.
We used it for a couple of months every day, then we felt so well that we stopped. When we meet a lot of people or when we feel the need for extra turmeric (more than what we put in the food) or a vague feeling of inflammation coming back, we immediately take a vape of turmeric.
This winter lots of people that we knew got pneumonia and even died in hospital. Maybe I am wrong but I feel the vaping has protected us, we were fine every day.

Haha! There is my brainfog in action! Just coming off an ear infection (would have been good to be vaping turmeric!) so the brain-flam is extreme right now.

Of course, dried turmeric in a jar in a dark place = long shelf life !! D'oh!

This process just sounds intuitively right. Will look into less costly vaping options and report back if I find something.

 

[brenda]

It would be nice to have one though even if not required for oneself so much, in order to help family friends and just people one knows. In that case l think the cost would be justified.

 

[Hip]

Very interesting experiment, Asklipia.

There may be some potential in this approach, since some of the constituent compounds in turmeric root are not well absorbed when taken orally.

However, the method you are using with the Volcano vaporizer will get very little, if any, of the major turmeric compounds (like curcumin) into your body. This is because the available temperature range settings of the Volcano vaporizer is 130°C to 230°C, but the actual boiling point of curcumin is much higher, at 591°C.

And most of the other major constituent compounds of turmeric also have quite high boiling points (see table below), mostly in the range of 300°C to 600°C. So your Volcano vaporizer is not really going to be able to vaporize these compounds effectively.

You can only effectively vaporize a substance with a temperature equal or greater than the boiling point of that substance (just as you can only start producing lots of steam from water once you reach water's boiling point at 100°C).

Vaporizers are fine for cannabis, because the boiling points of THC and CBD in cannabis are 157°C and 180°C respectively, so these are both easily vaporized if you set the vaporizer temperature above 180°C.

But you would need a more powerful vaporizer to reach the 300°C to 600°C boiling points of the main constituents of turmeric.

Alpha-zingiberene is the only major turmeric constituent that you might be able to vaporize with the Volcano vaporizer, because this volatile oil has quite a low boiling point.

Though turmeric does contain a number of minor constituents with lower boiling points in the 150°C to 250°C range; many of these minor constituents are essential oil-type ingredients, commonly found in a variety of essential oils. So by vaporizing turmeric you are kind of doing a form of aromatherapy with these essential oil-type ingredients. I would suggest that the benefits you obtained from vaporizing turmeric came from these lower boiling point essential oil-type minor ingredients, and from alpha-zingiberene.

Though if you smoked some turmeric powder in a cigarette, that would be able to vaporize all the major turmeric constituents, since the temperature of a burning cigarette reaches around 900°C during a puff. I am not suggesting you do this; though apparently burning turmeric and inhaling the smoke is a traditional medicinal remedy. †


———————————————————————————————————————
BOILING POINTS OF TURMERIC CONSTITUENTS
———————————————————————————————————————
MAJOR COMPOUNDS IN TURMERIC:

Curcumin · · · · · · · 591°C
Demethoxycurcumin· · · 571°C
Bisdemethoxycurcumin · 551°C

Ar-Turmerone · · · · · 326ºC
Alpha-Turmerone· · · · 320°C
Beta-Turmerone · · · · 320°C

Germacrone · · · · · · 330°C
Zingiberone· · · · · · 323°C
Ar-Curcumene · · · · · 276°C
Alpha-Zingiberene· · · 135°C (at 2 kPa)

MINOR COMPOUNDS IN TURMERIC:

Vanillic acid· · · · · 353°C
Rho-coumaric acid· · · 330°C
Xanthorrhizol· · · · · 327°C
Cinnamic acid· · · · · 300°C
Geraniol · · · · · · · 230°C
Terpineol· · · · · · · 219°C
Borneol· · · · · · · · 213°C
Terpinolene· · · · · · 185°C
Rho-cymene · · · · · · 177°C
1,8-cineole· · · · · · 177°C
Limonene · · · · · · · 176°C
Alpha-pinene · · · · · 155°C
———————————————————————————————————————

The above turmeric constituents from this comprehensive website about the health benefits of turmeric.

Some useful info about the pharmacology of turmeric (Curcuma longa) is found here.

 

[leela]

The following website doesn't break it down to constituents, but I'm guessing that Asklipia's success has been due to the dozen or so others that are not in the 500º range? There's no doubt curcumin is useful, but perhaps for this purpose it is not necessary.

http://www.integrativeoncology-essentials.com/2011/05/inhaling-vaporized-botanicals-as-medicine/
I like that it lists lots of other medicinals and their heat setting requirements.

It appears that the highest temperature setting on that particular device is capable of vaporising all but three of the turmeric constituents on your helpful breakdown/boiling point list, @Hip .

ETA: OOps I have an ongoing fever so I think I may have misread the link I just posted. I have too big a case of the Dumbs and the Tireds right now to tell if the article was in fact implying that the volcano could reach those temps.

 

[Asklipia]

Thank you so much @Hip for this extremely interesting post! Food for thought.

We have tried extracting the curcumins in alcohol and glycerine to make e-cigarette liquid, a more portable solution and one we could have spread around to sick friends not ready for the Volcano, but the results, even though positive, were decisively not as stellar.

Of course we have no way to test but it works perfectly and on both of us. No more inflammation in the sinuses/head/gums and it seems that we get the same effect generally as we can feel with high-potency curcumin supplements.

Could it be because even though only a tiny part of the good stuff was being vaporized, it was reaching in priority the parts that needed it most? The head for example?

Could it be because it by-passes the digestive tract and that makes for better absorption?
It is a bit like a curcumin injection I suppose. Even a tiny amount would affect the blood.

The Volcano certainly extracts whatever makes turmeric yellow, because I can see the vapour is yellow.

From the link you provided, I see that burning the turmeric is done with neem oil I notice, a powerful ingredient in itself.

Be well!

 

[Asklipia]

Also knowing that vaping is very efficient at delivering tetrahydrocannabitol, we thought that maybe it would work similarly with tetrahydrocurcuminoids.
Just a guess.

 

[Hip]

@Asklipia
The only constituent of turmeric that I am aware of being yellow is curcumin. In fact, pure curcumin is actually sold as a food colorant, and is given the European food additive number E100 (natural yellow 3). So perhaps small amounts of curcumin are being vaporized. You do actually get a small amount of vaporization even below the boiling point: just as with water, you get some evaporation of water even at room temperatures, that's of course how your clothes slowly dry; but obviously you don't start to get high amounts of water vapor from until you reach the boiling point of water. Also, if you are sucking hard on the vaporizer, this lowers air pressure, which in turn lowers the boiling point. So it might be curcumin in your vapor.

Or the yellow vapor you saw might be due to some other yellow colored component of turmeric.

One way to test would be to get some pure curcumin from a curcumin supplement capsule, and put that in the vaporizer. The if the vapor given off was still yellow, you know that is curcumin being vaporized.


It's interesting though that 1,8-cineole found in turmeric is a major constituent of Eucalyptus essential oil. This oil is of course renowned as a nasal and sinus decongestant, and often used in saunas. 1,8-cineole is otherwise known as eucalyptol, and gives Eucalyptus essential oil its expectorant properties.

Info about the medicinal benefits of some these essential oil components give here.


I don't think tetrahydrocurcumin is part of turmeric, buy it a metabolite of curcumin made the body.

 

[Asklipia]

The effect is not the same as inhaling Eucalyptus, maybe because there are other components to Eucalyptus?

The vapor is not really very yellow, it is white as far as I can see but leaves a yellow deposit inside the bag of the Volcano, so something yellow is indeed being vaporized.

We have tried a few things in this Volcano. The more interesting plants are those which do not yield essential oils easily. Essential oils of Eucalyptus etc are easily bought. You can bring eugenol etc to the lungs very easily.
You can anoint yourself with these oils too to by-pass the stomach.
However vaping turmeric is interesting I think because it is not easily assimilated.

Maybe for a good reason.
Which is why we stopped when we felt perfectly fine and will not do this lightly.

I am sure curcumin is being powerfully absorbed because every smoke induced strong spasms of the gallbladder, a sign of curcumin presence.

 

[Hip]

I have a problem with curcumin taken orally: doses higher than about 1000 mg of curcumin have the side effect of making me angry and irritable.

Curcumin has been shown to be a potent inhibitor of coxsackievirus B, a virus strongly linked to ME/CFS, and I would like to take significant doses of curcumin, say 10 grams a day, as an antiviral experiment. But I first need to find the reason why I get this anger side effect from curcumin, and then figure a way to prevent it happening, so that I can take this high 10 gram dose.

You have to take such high doses because the absorption of curcumin in the gut is so poor. You can buy curcumin–lecithin complexes like Meriva which are many time more absorbable — but then Meriva hardly puts any curcumin into their capsules, which defeats the object. A list of other highly absorption brands of curcumin is found at the bottom of this page.

It would be interesting if curcumin could be delivered by vaporization into the lungs.