What a Leading Vet Wants You to Know About Turmeric and Curcumin

Every so often, we sit in on a vet webinar and walk away wanting to rewrite everything we thought we knew about a “simple” ingredient. This week, that ingredient is turmeric.

At PetSummit’s Senior Dog Series, veterinarian Dr. Doug English broke down turmeric and curcumin in a way that finally makes the distinction click for pet owners who’ve heard both words used interchangeably.

Turmeric Is Not Curcumin

As Dr. English put it: “turmeric is the plant that contains curcumin, which is one of the bioactive ingredients.” Curcumin gets most of the credit in supplement marketing, but it’s actually a relatively small piece of the whole plant. “Curcumin makes up between probably two to 7% of the total ingredients in the plant,” he explained.

And the part of the plant that’s actually used may surprise you: “the part that we use is the rhizome, which is an underground stem. Many people call it a root, but it’s not a root.”

Golden Paste Has Serious Staying Power

Long before “golden paste” was a wellness trend, it was a tradition. “They’ve been using golden paste for 1000s of years in Eastern medicine and Eastern cultures,” Dr. English noted—a reminder that this isn’t a fad ingredient, but one with a long history of everyday use.

Why Turmeric’s Effects Are So Hard to Sum Up in One Sentence

If you’ve ever wondered why turmeric gets credit for supporting so many different aspects of wellness, Dr. English’s explanation of inflammation is a good place to start: “It’s a very complex question because there’s just not one effect.”

He continued: “It has probably several dozen modulators of your cytokine inflammatory mediators, and it slows them all down… turmeric does that. But probably another 30 or 40 different cytokines that it alters as well.” In short: “it’s got a large, wide effect, and more and more of these are being discovered all the time.”

How He Actually Recommends Preparing It

Here’s the practical part every pet owner should take away: turmeric on its own isn’t well absorbed. Dr. English’s advice is simple. “Best way to get it to be absorbed, just cook it in golden paste and incorporate that in food with an oil,” he said, and don’t skip the black pepper: “use pepper because the pepper slows down the excretion of it, so it’s more active for longer.”

The takeaway? Turmeric is a genuinely complex, well-studied ingredient, but how you prepare and pair it matters just as much as the ingredient itself.

Thank you to Dr. Doug English and the team at PetSummit’s Senior Dog Series for this excellent breakdown. You can learn more at petsummits.com.