Have Pesky Pain In Your Knees? Research Finds This Spice Can Help

Joint pain is no walk in the park when it's impacting your knees—literally. And for people with knee osteoarthritis, the desire for relief is strong, with no known "cure."

According to the Centers for Disease Control1, chronic pain caused by arthritis affects millions of people in the United States every year, with a quarter of adults with arthritis (15 million people) reporting experiencing severe joint pain and half of them reporting persistent pain.

For this study, researchers out of Australia looked at 70 participants with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, giving half of them a placebo supplement for two weeks, and the other half a supplement of Curcuma longa extract, also known as turmeric.

At the end of the 12-week study, turmeric appeared to beat out the placebo when it came to reducing knee pain. It didn't, however, impact things like swelling or cartilage composition.

But the participants who were supplementing with turmeric did report less pain than those in the placebo group—as well as reported taking fewer pain meds than the placebo group. (And for what it's worth, evidence shows pain medications like ibuprofen can disrupt your gut health.)