How NatureWise Turmeric Became Part of One Active Adult's Day

I did not set out to write about a supplement. I am Gwen Hartsell, I am 58, and I live in Asheville, North Carolina, where I walk about three miles most mornings and play pickleball twice a week with my friend Bev. What I wanted was for my right shoulder to stop complaining the morning after a match. That is the whole reason I ended up standing in my kitchen with my glasses pushed up on my head, reading the back of a bottle of NatureWise Turmeric Curcumin and trying to work out what 95% curcuminoids actually meant.

Before that bottle, I tried the free things. I stretched. I iced. I bought a different pillow, and then a second different pillow. I asked Dr. Lowe, my family doctor, whether I was being silly, and she gave me the answer I trust her for, which was that she could not promise me anything and that I should tell her if I started taking something new. So I did the reading myself. I am not a nurse or a dietitian. I am a retired high school office manager who reads labels, compares what is in a serving, and reports what happened to me and nothing more.

Turmeric was not hard to read about. What made me put the first bottle back on the shelf, and then pick it up again two weeks later, was the label itself. NatureWise lists curcumin standardized to 95% curcuminoids, alongside organic turmeric root, organic turmeric extract and organic ginger. The bottle I bought holds 90 capsules, unflavored, and it is a capsule, not a powder I had to mix into anything. It also lists black pepper extract, which is the piece I had seen mentioned everywhere and did not understand until I read the plain line on the listing: curcumin by itself is poorly absorbed by the body.

I started with one serving, the serving on the label, and I took it with dinner. That last part is not a small detail. The first time I took it on an empty stomach, before a morning walk, my stomach turned over on me and I spent twenty minutes wishing I had eaten toast first. It happened once, it did not happen again, and it only happened because I got sloppy. Now the bottle sits next to my krill oil on the counter and it goes down after a meal, every time. One other thing worth knowing: if a capsule opens, the powder will stain a countertop yellow. I found that out the ordinary way.

Here is what I noticed, and I am going to say it exactly as small as it was. Around six weeks in, my right shoulder felt less stiff the morning after pickleball. Not gone. Less stiff. I could reach for the coffee canister without the little flinch I had gotten used to. That is the entire claim I am making, about me, in my own routine, and I cannot tell you it will be your experience.

Around six weeks in, my right shoulder felt less stiff the morning after pickleball. Not gone. Less stiff. That is the entire claim I am making.

The reason I stayed with it is boring, which is probably why I trust it. The label does the talking. Curcumin standardized to 95% curcuminoids is a level of detail plenty of bottles leave off, and I have learned to put back anything that will not tell me what is actually in a serving. It is made in the USA in a facility that follows cGMP, and it goes through independent testing. It is non-GMO, and the capsules are vegan, which matters more to Bev than it does to me, but I noticed it on the label and I am passing it along.

I did not take it alone, and I want to be straight about that. Over about two years I tried supplements one at a time, each on its own for four months with a two week break in between, always after asking Dr. Lowe first. NatureWise has been my turmeric for 16 months now. The rest of the shelf is a collagen powder in my morning coffee, a glucosamine tablet with breakfast, an MSM capsule with lunch, and krill oil with dinner. Dale, my husband, takes none of it. He thinks the whole shelf is a waste of money, and he is entitled to that opinion.

What I can also tell you is what it did not do. It did not make me faster on the court. It did not fix my shoulder, because nothing I have tried has fixed my shoulder. On the two occasions I forgot the bottle entirely for a stretch of days, nothing dramatic happened, which is exactly what I would expect from a supplement and probably the most honest sentence in this piece.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before you start, especially if you take blood thinners or any other medication, or if you are pregnant. That is not a line I tacked on at the end. Dr. Lowe is the reason I space things out and try one at a time, because otherwise you have no idea what is doing what. Buy one bottle, not three. Take it with food, because I learned that the hard way. Give it more than a week before you decide anything, and be honest with yourself about what changed and what did not. If a supplement becomes the reason you stop asking a doctor about a shoulder that has been grumbling for a year, you have the order backwards. And if you want the plain version of my experience, it is this: six weeks, one small change, the label serving with dinner, sixteen months and counting.