I have huge amounts of musculoskeletal pain caused by breast cancer treatments in 2007-9. I had a mastectomy with a lat-dorsi (back muscle) breast reconstruction, which has left my entire back out of balance, almost constantly in pain, and prone to going into spasm if I dare to do anything remotely normal, like sitting up with my back unsupported, driving, standing up (heaven forbid!), or trying to do the shopping even though I use the trolley as a support.
On top of this, I have a complicated under-active thyroid process, raging fibromyalgia (much worse after chemo), and various old injuries (multiple whiplash, RSI to both wrists), recurrent calcium deposits on my supraspinatus tendons (both shoulders), hideous sinusitis pain, and impossible migraines with vomiting that would shame the girl in The Exorcist. 🤮 Obviously, a lot of this is caused by systemic inflammation. I can’t take NSAIDs, I’m delighted to say, because I’m happily allergic to them, as I am to vast swathes of pharmaceuticals.
I have spent most of the past 12 years stuck in bed. I do try to get to a yoga class once a week, and when I do, that’s very helpful to my main pain areas of my upper, mid, and lower back, my neck, and also to the very bottom of my back on each side, where the hips meet the back, somewhere in the region of the SIs.
Turmeric capsules or powder have done nothing noticeable, even when taken for years on end and in significant quantity - 4-8g a day, which in theory should have helped massively.
My hips and neck have been waking me up in the night, every night, for at least the last 24 months, if not longer. I’ve had special fibromyalgia physio, which was bliss but the effects never even lasted the journey home from the hospital each time. I’m prescribed Oramorph, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. I imagine it doesn’t always work simply because the inflammation isn’t being addressed, and that’s what perpetuates my pain.
The first curcumin capsule I took had a very noticeable and positive impact on my hip pain. I’ve found that I’m better one x1 cap in the morning, and x1 in the evening, and you do need to take it with something with a decent fat content (full-fat milk, for example, or a teaspoon of olive oil, avocado oil, that sort of thing) or it simply will not be properly effective.
Aside from my first bottle having one totally empty capsule in it (no loose powder, so a manufacturing issue), and it being a little bit more expensive than my slender means can comfortably cope with, it’s a great product and I’m very pleased with it. It doesn’t, however, state on the bottle the exact amounts of which specific curcuminoids are in it - yet if you look through the product questions, someone from Love Life has supplied them, so why aren’t they on the label or in the main product description?
Because of those three factors, for my second bottle of curcumin, I’ve ordered a different company’s curcumin product - sorry, Love Life! The other company DOES list the different curcuminoids on the label, is 475mg instead of 500mg, but has 120 caps instead of 60, for much less than double the cost of Love Life’s product.
I’m not sure how my pain levels will respond to a 50mg a day reduction in curcumin and its oids, but I will report back and update this review accordingly.
Happy to talk to a Love Life rep if they see this and choose to comment on the empty capsule and the missing curcuminoids information :)
| Additives | Curcumin |
|---|---|
| Units | 60.0 count |
| Serving Recommendation | 2 Capsules per day |
| Brand | LOVE LIFE SUPPLEMENTS |
| Format | Capsule |
| Age Range Description | Adult |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
