Does turmeric’s reputation translate into real health benefits?

Clinical trials show that curcumin, present in the spice, may help fight osteoarthritis and other diseases, but there's a catch - bioavailability, or how to get it into the blood

While Kamal Patel was probing through the reams of user data on examine.com - a website that calls itself the internet's largest database of nutrition and supplement research" - before a planned revamp later this year, he discovered that the most searched-for supplement on the website was curcumin, a distinctive yellow-orange chemical that is extracted from the rhizomes of turmeric, a tall plant in the ginger family, native to Asia.

Patel concluded that this was probably because of curcumin's purported anti-inflammatory properties. An astounding number of people experience inflammation or have inflammation-related health conditions, and curcumin and fish oil are two of the most researched supplements that can sometimes help," he says.