Can Turmeric Help Arthritis?
Osteoarthritis Is that debilitating, degenerative joint disease that typically occurs as you get older. But the truth is, anyone, at any age can experience symptoms of osteoarthritis, especially if there has been trauma or an injury to the joint.
The primary symptoms of osteoarthritis are joint pain, stiffness, potentially swelling, tenderness and crackling or catching of the joint when moving. Symptoms can be chronic, unfortunately experienced every day or they may come and go in short attacks on the joint.
The knee, hip and hands are the most commonly effected areas. These joints undergo varying degrees of stress and strain as part of normal daily life. Typically, the body works well to maintain the joint via various inflammatory responses that stimulate repair and healing. However, in osteoarthritis the protective layer of cartilage at the end of a bone at the joint never fully recovers, chronic low-grade inflammation ensues driven by the innate immune system. This results in many of the aforementioned symptoms and makes those otherwise mundane daily chores ever so challenging.
Treatments range from various forms of steroid injections, anti-inflammatory medications, exercises, braces or joint supports, and even wholesale dietary alterations, but there is currently no straightforward cure. In fact the only known cure is a complete joint replacement, which surely has to be the last resort when all alternatives are exhausted.
The disease undoubtedly impacts quality of life, so exploring all available options is certainly worthwhile. Enter curcumin.
We have written about curcumin in a previous post, which we highly recommend reading here. But in short curcumin is the bioactive ingredient found in the spice turmeric and it possesses the incredible natural ability to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress. At the correct dosage curcumin has been shown to reduce chronic pain, enhance recovery from exercise, improve mental wellbeing, among many other things, in well controlled scientific research.
With this knowledge researchers began to explore the potential role for both turmeric and the extract curcumin in the treatment of osteoarthritis. The findings have been quite remarkable.
One paper published in the journal BMC compared the effect of a daily dose of 1000 mg of turmeric extract versus a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called diclofenac in 139 individuals with knee osteoarthritis. One month into the trial, both treatments had a very similar effect on osteoarthritis symptoms, with at least a 50% improvement in symptom severity with both the natural turmeric treatment and the pharmaceutical non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. One interesting, and perhaps unsurprising benefit of using the natural turmeric extract as opposed to the pharmaceutical was that participants experienced less side effects, with 28% of those taking the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug requiring treatment of stomach ailments.
This study is not alone, there are more to support these findings. With a systematic review and meta-analysis in 2016 concluding that 1000 mg per day of curcumin is an effective treatment for osteoarthritis. Similarly a more recent systematic review in 2021 confirms those findings, but emphasizes the need to select a specific dosage in order to experience benefits.
That said, it would appear that B.fresh Turmeric Immunity and Boost are as effective as pharmaceutical drugs in the treatment of osteoarthritis. Both deliver 49 grams of fresh turmeric and roughly 1539 mg of curcumin, in line with the existing research and more than enough to alleviate those debilitating symptoms.
So if you or someone you know has this degenerative disease, that is currently impacting their quality of life then look no further and subscribe to our natural remedy right now.
