Why Do I Take Turmeric, And How Has Taking Turmeric Changed My Life?

I take turmeric mostly because of its powerful anti-inflammatory properties.

The more I study inflammation, the more I learn of how big a role it plays in everything that goes on in your body. Inflammation plays a central role in MOST, if not all, of the big killers and diseases in Western society—heart disease, cancer, diabetes, asthma, obesity, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease…the list goes on.

I read in a study once that turmeric is just as powerful as the harmful anti-inflammatory drug, ibuprofen. It may even be more powerful. It definitely is more powerful if you consider the fact that turmeric, being a whole-food, has no harmful side-effects, while ibuprofen can cause stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, fluid retention, and heart & kidney problems. You can only take ibuprofen for so long before your stomach starts to bleed, while turmeric you can take for the rest of your life.

I’ll admit that it was mostly my diet, exercise, and other lifestyle changes (e.g. stress reduction, better sleep, avoiding chemicals, cold water therapy) that helped reduce my knee arthritis, asthma, and weight problem. Turmeric was more like the icing on the cake.

With my diet, exercise and lifestyle changes in place, my knee arthritis was gone most of the time—enough to consider myself cured. I would suffer from asthma attacks once a month, as opposed to 3 to 4 times a day—enough to consider myself asthma-free. I lost enough weight to look decent in a t-shirt. With a good turmeric supplement in the mix, I never get an asthma attack, my knee always feels great, and I’m losing more weight than ever before.

As powerful as turmeric is, I think it’s always important to remember that it’s still just a “supplement”. Supplements can only supplement your diet, exercise, and lifestyle, they can’t replace your diet, exercise, or lifestyle. If you have a bad diet, do no exercise, you work nights, your life is full of stress and you’re a heavy smoker, turmeric is one of those rare supplements that’s powerful enough to still make a difference, but you’re not likely to see your life turn around (though turmeric has often proven me wrong in this regard—as you’ll see in the story of my mother-in-law below). If you want to change your life, eat good food, do good exercise, follow a natural healthy lifestyle, and then, to supercharge your results, take a good turmeric supplement.

That’s exactly what I’ve done, and my life is now completely different to what it used to be just a few years ago. I no longer have to carry an asthma pump with me everywhere I go. I can finally walk and run again with a pain-free knee. I still dread going shopping with my wife, but no longer because my knee hurts. I look good in the mirror, and no longer feel helpless about my weight—I still have a few inches of flab, but I know exactly what I need to do to get rid of it.

Best of all, my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy just 7 days ago. I’m a dad for the first time. If it happened a few years ago, I’d be overwhelmed. But now, thanks to my new diet, exercise, lifestyle changes, and supplementation with turmeric, I’m more ready for fatherhood than I ever was before. So bring on the sleepless nights, and bring on the dirty diapers.

Turmeric hasn’t just changed my life, I’ve recommended this wonder-supplement to friends and family, and I am frequently surprised by what it can do.

My mother-in-law for example, used to suffer from plantar fasciitis. This is a condition where the soles of your feet become so tender that it becomes extremely painful to walk.

Here in the UK, your family doctor will usually try to fix a problem him/herself before they refer you to a specialist. My mother-in-law’s doctor tried prescribing several different analgesics, including paracetamol, codeine phosphate, and ibuprofen. Nothing seemed to work. In the end, his solution was to prescribe amitriptyline, an antidepressant drug with a plethora of side-effects, which is often used to treat nerve pain. My mother-in-law’s family doctor obviously didn’t know what the diagnosis was, and wanted to throw amitriptyline at her, hoping she would go away.

That’s when my mother-in-law came to see me about her condition. She didn’t want to take amitriptyline because of all the common side-effects of this drug, which include dizziness, headaches, weight gain and addiction to the drug. Thankfully, I recognized her symptoms and gave her a bottle of my turmeric supplement. I figured turmeric would help, since plantar fascitis is an inflammation of the plantar fascia, a band of tissue that runs under the sole of the foot, and turmeric is known for its powerful anti-inflammatory properties.

Within the first day of taking turmeric, her symptoms were gone.

After many months of staying indoors, scared stiff of placing her feet on the floor, my mother-in-law was finally walking outdoors, going shopping, and going back to her sessions at the gym.