Turmeric is nature’s solution for all types of pain.
Whether you suffer from back pain, headache, joint pain, nerve pain, or any other type of pain, studies show that turmeric can help.
The thing about pharmaceutical medical pain killers is that each pain killer has a very specific mode of action, which is why your doctor will often prescribe a different drug based on the specific type of pain you have.
Pharmaceutical pain killing drugs are very good at doing one specific thing, and some are often more powerful than turmeric at reducing certain types of pain.
But this powerful pain reduction from pharmaceutical drugs comes at a price: side effects.
- The more powerful the drug, the bigger the side-effects.
- The longer you take the drug for, the greater the toll these side-effects have on your body.
- The greater the dose, the greater the side-effects.
- Take multiple drugs, and you suffer from more side effects.
So what do you do when you’ve got chronic pain, or you’ve got multiple different types of pain, say you’ve got back pain and you suffer from migraines?
Well, if you only rely on conventional medical drugs, you’ve either got to put up with the side-effects, or you’ve got to put up with the pain.
Potential side-effects of pharmaceutical pain killers include liver damage, stomach bleeding, kidney damage, constipation, drowsiness, dizziness, increased risk of heart attack and stroke, high blood pressure, and countless more.
But Turmeric Is Different…
Turmeric on the other hand, is a natural whole-food with no known major side-effects. Unlike medical pain killers, turmeric is actually good for your health and benefits you in many ways. For all the benefits it brings you, turmeric is worth taking even if you don’t have any pain.
It’s not just safe, turmeric is a potent pain killer too, many studies have found it to be just as effective as medical drugs at killing pain.
Any time I suffer from pain, the first thing I do is take turmeric and use other natural methods like transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) and cryotherapy. If this is not enough, only then would I consider taking a medical drug, and since I discovered these natural methods, I have not once had to take a medical drug for pain.
If you’ve got more pain than I do, and turmeric on its own isn’t enough, the good thing is taking turmeric could make it so you require a lower dose of pharmaceutical pain killers, and studies show turmeric can even help reduce the risk of side-effects from pharmaceutical drugs.
So let’s take a look at what the science says about turmeric for different types of pain.
Turmeric For Joint Pain
Turmeric’s ability to reduce joint pain is one of turmeric’s most well studied attributes.
In a 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis, researchers analysed 8 of the highest quality studies looking at the effects of turmeric extracts on joint pain. They concluded that scientific evidence supports the efficacy of turmeric extracts in reducing joint pain.
4 of these studies compared turmeric extracts with conventional pain killers like ibuprofen and diclofenac, and all 4 studies found that turmeric extracts were just as effective as conventional pain killers at relieving joint pain and stiffness.
Click here to learn more about how turmeric can reduce joint pain
Turmeric For Back Pain
The role of turmeric in back pain isn’t nearly as well studied as its role in joint pain, but the preliminary studies that have been done show promising results.
There’s also plenty of anecdotal evidence online from people who have reduced their back pain with turmeric. I did a statistical analysis of the reviews online for turmeric supplements, and discovered that back pain is the #2 most common problem that people say turmeric has helped them with, with joint pain being #1.
You can get back pain because of damage to bone, nerve, muscle, tendons, ligaments, and intervertebral disc. Preliminary animal and in-vitro studies suggest that turmeric may not only reduce back pain, but may also prevent further damage to these tissues, and possibly even help repair some of the damage done to these tissues. This is something medical drugs don’t do.
Turmeric For Headaches & Migraines
Like with back pain, scientists have recently taken an interest in turmeric’s ability to reduce headaches and migraines. Preliminary studies have shown promising results.
In a 2019 randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial, researchers looked at the effect of curcumin (an important active component of turmeric) and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) on human patients with migraine.
They took 91 migraine patients and randomly allocated them into one of four groups:
- Curcumin + CoQ10
- Curcumin
- CoQ10
- Placebo
By the end of the 8-week study, group 1 taking both curcumin and CoQ10 had significantly lower frequency, severity, and duration of migraine attacks than all other groups. No serious side effects were reported by the patients.
Group 2 (curcumin only) and group 3 (CoQ10 only) also experienced significantly reduced migraine symptoms, and one wasn’t found to be particularly more effective than the other. But seeing as group 1 (curcumin + CoQ10) had significantly better results than the groups taking either supplement alone, the researchers concluded that there is an “additive and synergistic association” between curcumin and CoQ10 on reducing pain in patients with migraine.
Turmeric For Nerve Pain
Turmeric’s effect on nerve pain (aka neuropathic pain) is another area of study that researchers have taken an interest in lately.
The research hasn’t gotten to the stage of human clinical trials yet, but there are plenty of animal studies showing promising results.
In a 2020 Chinese study, researchers injected rats with an anti-cancer drug that is known to cause nerve damage leading to neuropathic pain.
They discovered that treating these rats with curcumin not only significantly reduced their drug induced neuropathic pain, but unlike pharmaceutical pain killers, the curcumin also improved nerve function by protecting the nerves from damage by the anti-cancer drug.
Other animal studies have shown that curcumin from turmeric may also help reduce neuropathic pain from traumatic nerve injury, diabetic neuropathy, and even snake venom!
It seems likely that turmeric, due to its neuroprotective properties, can help with nerve pain, regardless of the cause or type of nerve pain.
Turmeric For Other Types Of Pain
Studies have shown that turmeric extracts may also help relieve post-operative pain, dental pain, muscle soreness from exercise, traumatic pain from injuries (which is how I benefit from it most), drug induced musculoskeletal pain, burn pain, and more.
In almost all of the studies I’ve seen looking at the effects of turmeric on pain, the researchers have discovered that the turmeric extracts also help to prevent further damage to tissues and sometimes even accelerate healing of the tissues.
This is something pharmaceutical drugs DON’T DO. All they do is kill the pain on the surface, they do nothing to remedy the problem beneath the surface that’s causing the pain in the first place.
In fact, they may make the problem worse, because pharmaceutical pain killers are generally known to increase oxidative stress, which may lead to more damage to your tissues over time.
Also, all of the studies I’ve seen on turmeric for pain are short-term studies. Given that turmeric may help to heal your damaged tissues, and that pharmaceutical pain killers may cause further damage, it will be interesting to see how turmeric performs against medical drugs in the long-run.
From what I’ve seen, I’m willing to bet that using turmeric long-term will give you far better pain relief, and improve your quality of life significantly more than taking pharmaceutical pain killers.
How Turmeric Has Helped Me With Pain
I have a lot of areas in my body where I frequently feel pain.
Turmeric has been a real blessing to me, in that it takes the pain away, and I believe it also helps heal whatever damage there is that causes the pain.
- I injured my left leg in a road traffic accident when I was 13, and I developed left knee arthritis in my twenties.
- I injured my upper back/neck while doing heavy lat pull-downs at the gym. I injured my lower back while doing heavy front squats. Both areas are prone to get re-injured if I’m not careful with my training.
- I fractured my right wrist while playing football, and I can feel a slight twinge and stiffness there when I’m exercising or lifting something heavy.
So knee pain, back pain, neck pain, and wrist pain. Plus there’s the pain from all the random injuries you pick up when you live an active lifestyle.
I’ve noticed that when I regularly take turmeric, it does the following for my pain:
- It prevents pain from developing by preventing injuries.
- It quickly reduces, and often completely eliminates the pain when I do get injured.
- It speeds up the recovery process by helping to heal the damage done by the injury.
Just recently, I was suffering from both upper and lower back pain from two separate injuries. The upper back pain was so bad I could barely move my neck.
I’ve had these injuries before, and it usually takes at least a couple of months before I am fully recovered.
This time however, thanks to regularly taking turmeric, I was pain-free after a few days, and fully recovered in just 2 weeks (where I no longer needed turmeric to keep the pain away).
Will Turmeric Help Relieve Your Pain?
From the science, it seems likely that turmeric will help you with your pain, regardless of what type of pain you have.
The only way to know how much of the pain turmeric will take off, is to give it a try.
If turmeric doesn’t relieve your pain completely by itself, then you’re better off taking both turmeric and pharmaceutical pain killers, as opposed to taking just pharmaceutical pain killers on their own. This is because turmeric can reduce the dosage of pharmaceutical drug that you need, and it can help protect you from the side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs.
Give turmeric a try, and let us know how you get on by posting a comment below.