A high quality turmeric supplement which takes a couple of months to really come into play pretty much covered all my joint pain issues after a decade of too much Advil.

Well, I'm an old guy with a bad shoulder and a bad knee that I've been through the chronic pain mill on for decades. I also have a microbiology background and am decent enough with the pharma/medical/research literature. After a couple of decades of Advil keeping all but the worst of the problem at bay well enough to climb, I ended up being told to get off of it by my doctor. She recommended the Turmeric. I had tried chondroitin compounds over the course of a year and that didn't really do anything significant for me. However, with turmeric (high-grade curcumin), after loading it for ninety days, I was completely free of all joint pain and off the advil for the first time in recent memory.

It is not imaginary or a fluke and there are many well-documented studies on curcurimine you can reference. Sure, some are suspect, commercially-sponsored boondoggles, but most are not.

Check it out for yourself, YMMV...

Since Advil inhibits healing, the improvement you experienced could have simply been due to your discontinuing Advil.

Having had very clear Xrays and MRI of the should and knee in the past and seen their state it unfortunately just isn't a matter of 'healing', but rather of mileage.

So, it's a matter of chronic pain that existed with or without the advil prior to use of turmeric. The advil lessend it, the turmeric largely eliminated it.

I'd done several year-long cold turkey stretches with no advil prior to trying the turmeric and it was probably a half a year dry spell before learning about the turmeric and trying it. The point being I'm intimately familiar with the pain levels both off and on the advil and the turmeric is the only thing which has really provided convincing long term relief for the first time to the point I wouldn't be climbing at this point without it.

Safety and Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Curcumin: A Component of Tumeric (Curcuma longa)
To cite this article:
Nita Chainani-Wu. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. February 2003, 9(1): 161-168. doi:10.1089/107555303321223035.

Published in Volume: 9 Issue 1: July 5, 2004
Full Text PDF (129.7 KB) Full Text PDF with Links (221.2 KB)
Author information
Nita Chainani-Wu, DMD, MPH, MS
Department of Stomatology, University of California, San Francisco, CA
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Tumeric is a spice that comes from the root Curcuma longa, a member of the ginger family, Zingaberaceae. In Ayurveda (Indian traditional medicine), tumeric has been used for its medicinal properties for various indications and through different routes of administration, including topically, orally, and by inhalation. Curcuminoids are components of tumeric, which include mainly curcumin (diferuloyl methane), demethoxycurcumin, and bisdemethoxycurcmin.

Objectives: The goal of this systematic review of the literature was to summarize the literature on the safety and anti-inflammatory activity of curcumin.

Methods: A search of the computerized database MEDLINE™ (1966 to January 2002), a manual search of bibliographies of papers identified through MEDLINE, and an Internet search using multiple search engines for references on this topic was conducted. The PDR for Herbal Medicines, and four textbooks on herbal medicine and their bibliographies were also searched.

Results: A large number of studies on curcumin were identified. These included studies on the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and antifungal properties of curcuminoids. Studies on the toxicity and anti-inflammatory properties of curcumin have included in vitro, animal, and human studies. A phase 1 human trial with 25 subjects using up to 8000 mg of curcumin per day for 3 months found no toxicity from curcumin. Five other human trials using 1125-2500 mg of curcumin per day have also found it to be safe. These human studies have found some evidence of anti-inflammatory activity of curcumin. The laboratory studies have identified a number of different molecules involved in inflammation that are inhibited by curcumin including phospholipase, lipooxygenase, cyclooxygenase 2, leukotrienes, thromboxane, prostaglandins, nitric oxide, collagenase, elastase, hyaluronidase, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), interferon-inducible protein, tumor necrosis factor (TNF), and interleukin-12 (IL-12).

Conclusions: Curcumin has been demonstrated to be safe in six human trials and has demonstrated anti-inflammatory activity. It may exert its anti-inflammatory activity by inhibition of a number of different molecules that play a role in inflammation.

A high quality turmeric supplement which takes a couple of months to really come into play pretty much covered all my joint pain issues after a decade of too much Advil.

Several thousands of years of Chinese and Indian medicine probably covers the general risk proposition. I and my wife, who's been doing advanced yoga for fifteen years, have found no downsides over the years we've been taking [tumeric]. YMM certainly V.