Research shows that chronic inflammation is associated with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. There are indications that other health conditions can be affected as well. However, chronic inflammation can be treated. Franco Cavaleri’s patented nutraceutical innovations from his company, Biologic PharmaMedical, offer new solutions.
Not all inflammation is harmful. Acute inflammation is when a person sees redness and swelling from an injury, like a cut. The body’s immune system sends white blood cells to fight the infection and speed healing. However, chronic inflammation often shows no obvious signs. It happens when the immune system continues to pump out white blood cells, often attacking nearby healthy tissues and organs.
During college, Cavaleri suffered from a gastrointestinal problem that always flared up during exam periods. He thought he couldn’t handle stress. In 1991, he was preparing to go to California to compete in Mr. North America, a major body-building event. Instead, he spent the summer hospitalized with ulcerative colitis.
“It was the first time doctors had diagnosed that I had a condition that was tangible,” Cavaleri says. “I realized that this happened during the two months when I had stopped taking the curcumin compound that I had extracted.”
Franco says the doctors wanted to do surgery to take out part of his large intestine because his body’s immune system was attacking it. Cavaleri had been working with curcumin since his first year at the University of British Columbia, where he studied biochemistry and nutritional sciences. He had been working to try and optimize its activity. He declined the doctors’ recommendations and returned to researching (and taking) his curcumin compounds, as he had done during his previous bodybuilding training.
“I had used anti-inflammatory agents during training to improve recovery,” Cavaleri says. “At the time, I didn’t know it was also taking the edge off of an autoimmune disease that I had but didn’t realize was slowly escalating. Inflammation plays an underlying role in every case of disease, no matter what it is, including dementia and depression, as the latest research indicates. The study of the inflammatory pathway became the central focus of my thesis subject for my doctoral work at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine in the Center for Brain Research and has been a central pathway of study ever since.”
Things changed within three months of returning to taking the compound he’d been working with, where he had extracted a particular fraction of the curcumin that appeared to be working better.
“My health was quite a bit better,” Franco explains. “I wasn’t 100 percent recovered, but I was good enough to get back to training the way I could before.”
After graduation, Cavaleri continued his work in this field. He started a company marketing curcuminoids, sold it to a public company, and then started a company for pet health supplements. Four years later, he sold that one to another large company.
“I stayed in the training and fitness arena, not competitively, but continued my research,” Franco says. “I just used the corporations to fund my research, which was the goal. Most people build a company to make a lot of money. Money is nice, yes, but it was funding the research to better understand what was happening here. Eventually, I felt I needed to dive deeper into this space, and I went back to finish my experimental medicine PhD at UBC.”
Through the university, Cavaleri began collaborating with another company, another university, and researchers in India, where there are fewer burdensome regulations on conducting cancer research, he says. His doctoral work honed in on analyzing the sub-cellular effects of these compounds he had worked with.
Cavaleri started Biologic PharmaMedical, which makes and sells nutraceuticals, which are natural medicines made from compounds he has worked with. His company is business-to-business and modifies his products to be unique for each business that wants to sell them. Nunu, Piraka, Purica, and Northstar are three of his many clients.
“There’s a place for natural medicines, and there’s a place for pharmaceuticals,” Franco Cavaleri says. “These two groups attack each other in the marketplace, but the reality is, it’s all about treating humanity the best way we can. They serve humanity in different ways. And sometimes in similar ways, but some people can’t tolerate one type of compound, like a Western medication, but can use the nutraceuticals without ill effects.”
