Why bioavailability, not just the quantity, matters when it comes to curcumin.
Curcumin is one of the most intensively studied plant compounds worldwide. For decades, scientists have been investigating its role in a wide variety of biological processes. Today, numerous scientific publications examine curcumin in connection with oxidative stress, inflammatory processes, metabolism, the brain, and joints, among other things.
Despite this enormous scientific interest, there is one crucial challenge with curcumin: its comparatively low bioavailability.
With curcumin, it's not just the quantity of the plant compound that matters. Equally important is how much of it the body can actually absorb.
That is precisely why, in addition to dosage, another factor is increasingly coming into focus when it comes to curcumin: the formulation.
And that leads to the question: How must curcumin be processed so that it is as readily available to the body as possible?
Bioavailability – what happens after ingestion
A complex biological pathway lies between ingestion and the bloodstream.
A plant compound must first be released, distributed throughout the digestive tract, and then overcome the intestinal barrier. Simultaneously, a portion can already be metabolized in the intestines and liver.
Bioavailability, in simple terms, refers to the extent to which an ingested substance eventually becomes available in the bloodstream.
This is precisely where the challenge lies with curcumin.
Curcumin as a challenge – and how nature shows the way
Curcumin is fat-soluble and therefore only dissolves to a limited extent in the aqueous environment of our digestive tract.
Our bodies also encounter this problem with other fat-soluble substances. During fat digestion, so-called micelles are formed with the help of bile acids.
These are tiny structures that make fat-soluble molecules transportable in an aqueous environment, thus supporting their absorption.
NovaSOL® technology utilizes precisely this natural principle.
NovaSOL® technology – Curcumin already formulated in micellar form
With NovaSOL®, curcumin is embedded in microscopically small micelles before ingestion.
This allows the fat-soluble plant compound to be distributed much more effectively in the digestive tract. Studies show that the improved solubility after digestion, in particular, can make a significant contribution to the higher bioavailability of micellar curcumin formulations.²
The crucial difference, therefore, lies not in the curcumin itself, but in its formulation.
And this difference can be measured.
185 times higher bioavailability compared to native curcumin
Schiborr and colleagues investigated how large the difference can be in a randomized crossover human study with 23 healthy adults.
Participants received 500 mg of curcuminoids at different time points as native curcumin, micronized curcumin, or micellar formulation. Curcuminoid concentrations in the blood were then measured over 24 hours.¹
The result:
Micronized curcumin achieved an average bioavailability approximately 9 times higher than native curcumin.
In the micellar formulation, it was even 185 times higher across all participants.¹
The study thus impressively demonstrates the influence that the formulation can have on how much curcumin becomes available in the bloodstream after ingestion.
A subsequent randomized crossover human study compared different curcumin formulations. Here too, micellar curcumin achieved significantly higher bioavailability than native curcumin – in this study, the measured AUC was 57 times higher.²
This makes one point particularly clear:
The milligram amount alone only tells part of the story when it comes to curcumin. The question of how curcumin is ingested is at least as interesting.
But what is curcumin actually interesting for?
Of course, improved absorption is only exciting if the plant substance itself is also scientifically interesting.
And this is precisely where curcumin becomes interesting: Many human studies deal with biological processes and health areas that are directly relevant to humans.
Joints and mobility
Curcumin is being studied particularly intensively in connection with knee osteoarthritis.
In an eight-week, randomized, placebo-controlled study with 101 adults, the curcumin group reported, among other things, greater improvements in knee pain than the placebo group.³
Further clinical studies and current evaluations also show positive signals regarding pain, joint function and stiffness – although the curcumin formulations and study designs used differ significantly in some cases.
metabolism
Interesting results were also found regarding metabolism.
Meta-analyses of randomized studies report that curcumin is associated with changes in fasting blood glucose, HbA1c and certain blood lipid levels in people with metabolic disorders.
In a recent meta-analysis of people with type 2 diabetes, fasting blood glucose decreased on average by around 11.5 mg/dl and HbA1c levels by about 0.54 percentage points compared to the control group.⁴
Changes in insulin resistance and LDL cholesterol have also been observed in various studies. However, the results vary depending on the initial situation, dosage, and curcumin formulation used.
Inflammatory processes and oxidative stress
Another major area of research focuses on inflammatory processes and oxidative stress.
Meta-analyses report, among other things, lower levels of certain inflammatory markers such as hs-CRP and IL-6 after curcumin supplementation.⁵
Markers of oxidative metabolism are also being investigated. These include, for example, malondialdehyde (MDA), which is used as a marker for oxidative changes in lipids.⁵
Therefore, curcumin is no longer viewed solely as a simple "antioxidant". What is scientifically interesting is how this plant compound interacts with various cellular regulatory and signaling pathways.
Brain and memory
Cognitive health is also the subject of clinical research.
An 18-month, placebo-controlled study in adults without dementia investigated a bioavailable curcumin formulation. The curcumin group showed improvements in memory and attention compared to placebo. Simultaneously, changes in specific amyloid and tau signals in individual brain regions were observed using PET scans.⁶
Meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials are now also examining the relationship between curcumin and cognitive performance.⁷
The data is therefore interesting, but must be considered in a differentiated manner. Not every curcumin formulation has the same bioavailability, and dosages, duration of intake, and the groups of people studied also differ between the studies.
With curcumin, it's not just what it contains that matters.
Curcumin research clearly demonstrates why the quantity of plant substances should not be the only factor considered.
Between ingestion and actual availability in the organism lie solubility, digestion, absorption and metabolism.
This is precisely where the micellar formulation of NovaSOL® comes into play.
Human studies show that the bioavailability of curcumin can change significantly depending on the formulation.
This has also led to a further development of the scientific question surrounding curcumin: Not only how much curcumin is ingested, but also the form in which it is present, can be crucial in determining how much of it is actually available to the body.
Sources
[1] Schiborr C, Kocher A, Behnam D, Jandasek J, Toelstede S, Frank J. The oral bioavailability of curcumin from micronized powder and liquid micelles is significantly increased in healthy humans and differs between sexes. Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. 2014;58(3):516–527.
[2] Flory S, Sus N, Haas K, et al. Increasing Post-Digestive Solubility of Curcumin Is the Most Successful Strategy to Improve its Oral Bioavailability: A Randomized Cross-Over Trial in Healthy Adults and In Vitro Bioaccessibility Experiments. Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. 2021;65(24):e2100613.
[3] Lopresti AL, Smith SJ, Jackson-Michel S, Fairchild T. An Investigation into the Effects of a Curcumin Extract (Curcugen®) on Osteoarthritis Pain of the Knee: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study. Nutrients. 2022;14(1):41.
[4] Tabatabaei-Malazy O, et al. Curcumin Attenuates Hyperglycemia and Inflammation in Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. Nutrients. 2024;16(23):4177.
[5] Meta-analytic studies on curcumin, inflammatory markers and oxidative stress.
[6] Small GW, Siddarth P, Li Z, et al. Memory and Brain Amyloid and Tau Effects of a Bioavailable Form of Curcumin in Non-Demented Adults: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled 18-Month Trial. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 2018;26(3):266–277.
[7] Wang et al. The effect of curcumin supplementation on cognitive function: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. 2025.