My Nature Bounty Turmeric Review – Too Cheap To Be True?
It’s time for my Nature Bounty Turmeric review, a supplement that convinced me to try it because of one thing – its price.
To be honest, it’s one of the cheapest turmeric supplements I’ve ever seen. And if you take a closer look, it doesn’t seem too bad. On paper, one bottle should last about 60 days, which is a lot.
But as I somehow expected, it’s pretty weak when it comes to ingredients. It does contain the right substances, but the doses are really low. I tried out the 450 mg version, so that’s the one I will be talking about.
Note: This review is based on my experience with this supplement, so it won’t necessarily agree with other reviews you find. I’m not praising/ criticizing the product or its company, I am simply telling my opinion about it.
So Let’s Get To The Review
Full Name: Turmeric Curcumin 450 mg from Nature’s Bounty
Quantity : 60 capsules
Best Actual Price: $6.99
Where I Bought It From: Ebay
Designed For: Joint pain caused by inflammation and swelling. Turmeric is my top recommendation for RA, but I personally don’t believe it’s a great choice in OA (though some people recommend it). That’s because in OA there’s no major inflammation, instead the pain is caused by cartilage damage.
So in my opinion, this supplement is designed for joint pain caused by swelling and not cartilage problems.
My Rating: 6 out of 10. I only gave it this mark because it’s extremely cheap. Otherwise, it would surely get a lower score
Worth Buying?: For $7, yes it’s worth buying. But I doubt it will help you much, especially if you have arthritis or joint pain. It has a few major drawbacks, like the lack of bioperine and the really low dose of turmeric.
So at this price, I can’t really say it’s not worth it because it’s a bargain. But I personally don’t recommend it, simply because it’s pretty weak overall. It didn’t bring me any major relief, so I don’t really trust it
What I Liked About It
- It contains a decent quantity of curcuminoides, which is a pretty rare ingredient in cheap supplements
- On paper, you only need one pill per day
- You can find it in lots of shops and online retailers
- No side effects, even when I took 3 pills instead of one
- One of the cheapest turmeric supplements I’ve ever seen
What I Didn’t Like About It
- No bioperine, which is an essential ingredient
- Pretty low dose of turmeric powder
- I needed 3 pills to notice an improvement
- Overall it didn’t help me much in terms of pain. It only decreased my flare-ups and most painful days, but I was still in pain most of the time, just as before (I got this effect while taking 3 pills)
The Ingredients – Not Amazing
Just like with any supplement, this is the chapter I analyze first. And to be honest, I was pretty disappointed with Nature Bounty’s product. That’s not necessarily for what it contains, but for what it doesn’t contain.
Considering it only cost about $7, I didn’t expect it to have the whole pack of curcumin + curcuminoides + bioperine. I could have skipped curcuminoides, though they’re really good. But I was expecting it to have bioperine, which is essential in my opinion.
So let’s take a look at the label:
– Turmeric root (450 mg) – that’s actually the turmeric powder, which is the main ingredient of every supplement based on this herb. This dose is pretty low, to be honest, as most supplements contain about 1000 mg.
Considering the price, it’s not that bad, but I want to judge fairly, so I wouldn’t normally considering this dose as a good one.
– Turmeric extract (50 mg) – these are actually the curcuminoides I mentioned above, which are a great ingredient for inflammation. The dose is pretty good, compared to the one of turmeric root, which is quite surprising. So when it comes to this ingredient, I’m quite satisfied.
Conclusion: The ingredients are rather weak than good, in my opinion. There’s a pretty low dose of turmeric powder and most importantly, there’s no bioperine.
I really appreciate the decent dose of curcuminoides, though. I wouldn’t have expected to see them in a $7 supplement, so that’s the only good point I can find. But obviously, it can’t fully compensate.
My Experience With This Supplement
So I bought Nature Bounty’s product mainly because of its really low price, because I had nothing to lose. At $7, it’s literally a bargain.
But considering its low doses, I didn’t make great expectations. I had rheumatoid arthritis and my pain was up to a 7 in some days. It was worst in my hands, especially in the mornings (obviously, I also had some really bad stiffness). So could this product help?
I took it for about 3-4 weeks and I didn’t notice a massive change. While I took one pill, there was no improvement, but once I went up to 3, I could see a small change. My flare-ups weren’t as often as before, so I didn’t have that many days in terrible pain.
But other than that, my pain hadn’t improved much. I was still about a 5.5-6 in most days, but as I said, the only difference was that it wasn’t getting even worse in some days (as it did before).
So in about a month, that was the only improvement I could see. I was still in pain most of the time, so that’s not really a major improvement. Maybe I should have taken more than 3 pills, but that seemed a bit too much for me. So that’s pretty much all I can say about this supplement.
But let me tell you exactly what I liked and what I did not like about it, overall.
PRO #1 – Great Price
If I had to choose the best thing about this supplement, it would surely be the price.
As I said in the beginning, it’s one of the cheapest turmeric supplements I ever came across. And I’ve tried a lot, believe me.
The average product costs around $20- $24. There are a lot that cost more, but I personally wouldn’t use one of those on the long term. That’s why I don’t even recommend any which is over $25.
Yes, I try expensive supplements pretty often, but I rarely buy them the second time. I know you can get something really good for less money, so why spend more?
So coming back to Nature Bounty’s product, I really have to praise it at this chapter. I’m not a huge fan of its ingredients, just like I said they’re pretty weak. But if I think that it only costs $7, then it doesn’t look that bad anymore.
Overall, I think it’s pretty worth $7. Now, I personally wouldn’t recommend it, nor buy it again. It’s too weak for chronic pain or arthritis, in my opinion. But considering its price, it’s definitely not a bad product, especially if you compare it with other supplements.
PRO #2 – Curcuminoides
I know I said that I’m pretty disappointed by this supplement’s ingredients. And I really am, as they have pretty low doses. But the only thing that I like at this chapter are curcuminoides.
As I said before, I surely did not expect to see this substance inside Nature Bounty’s product. A lot of expensive supplements don’t contain it, so how could I find it inside a $7 product? That was surely a very pleasant surprise.
Curcuminoides are basically the extract of curcumin, so they are a lot more concentrated and they need lower doses to be effective. That’s why 50 mg is a really good dose. I think I saw at most 150 mg in a supplement, so the difference isn’t very big, from this point of view.
Studies showed that curcuminoides are much better anti-inflammatory than turmeric powder itself.
That’s why I always recommend supplements that contain this ingredient. I noticed they work much better for me, compared to the ones with turmeric powder alone.
So when it comes to this supplement’s ingredients, curcuminoides are a great advantage. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I liked from that list.
CON #1 – No Bioperine
In my opinion, that’s the major drawback of this supplement and of many other products. I personally try to avoid turmeric supplements without bioperine, and I don’t really advise people to try them. In a lot of cases, they’re pretty much a waste of money.
If you’re familiar with turmeric, you probably know why bioperine is essential. But if you’re not, it’s about one thing – absorption.
Turmeric and curcumin aren’t properly absorbed by our body. The biggest part of them is eliminated immediately. So if you’re taking 1000 mg of curcumin alone, your body will only absorb less than 500 mg. I can’t tell you the exact number (because it depends of brand), but it’s basically under 50%.
So what bioperine (or the extract of black pepper) does is that it increases the absorption of curcumin with up to 2000%. It’s not me saying that, it’s researchers and studies.
To help you get an idea, a turmeric supplement with bioperine will have an absorption close to 100%, if I’m not wrong. That’s why this ingredient is so essential.
But as Nature Bounty’s product has zero bioperine, this means that from those 450 mg of turmeric powder, less than 225 will be absorbed. That is honestly a very very small quantity and I doubt it could do anything in terms of relieving pain.
If you have a minor inflammation, it could do something, but I’m still not very sure. So in my opinion, that’s the #1 problem of this supplement.
CON #2 – Doesn’t Last That Much
One of the things that really attracted me at this supplement was the number of pills it had inside. Excluding its really low price, that was the thing that convinced me to try it. After all, I wasn’t losing anything.
So according to the label, you have to take 1 pill per day. As there are 60 in total, this means that one bottle should last exactly 60 days, which is 2 months. To be honest, that is a lot! So at first sight, this thing seems like an amazing deal.
But that’s only on paper. Because in reality, one bottle lasted much less.
As I said above, I started out with one pill but I didn’t notice any improvement. I increased the dose until I got to 3 pills per day, and that’s when I started feeling a change. It wasn’t a major one, but at least there was a change.
So for me, one bottle lasted a month and a bit. Now, considering I paid $7 on it, that’s not bad at all. But considering it should normally last 2 months, that’s not very encouraging either.
Overall, I really don’t want to criticize this supplement at this chapter, because it’s extremely cheap so I didn’t waste a fortune on it. But I just want to point out that it may not last 2 months, as you would normally think.
If you don’t have a minor pain, I’m pretty sure you will need more than 1 pill per day. So keep this in mind before making any plans with this supplement.
CON #3 – Didn’t Do Much
I can’t say I expected a full relief from this supplement, just because I tried a lot of products and I kind of estimate their effect after the ingredients.
So Nature Bounty’s supplement didn’t look amazing, mainly because it had no bioperine. The dose of turmeric was also pretty low, but I could forgive that.
Just like I said above, these pills didn’t help me with anything until I started taking 3 per day. That’s when I noticed that my overall pain was a bit lower, meaning that my most painful days weren’t that painful anymore.
But other than that, my average pain was still about a 6. I would still wake up with stiff members almost every morning. The fact that my flare-ups weren’t that often was an improvement, but not a major one.
So I think this supplement helped me rather in a general way than in a specific one. I really appreciate that I had no side effects while I was on 3 pills, which was great. But I’m pretty sure thing would have changed if I kept increasing the dose.
Therefore, my overall thought about how this supplement works isn’t a very positive one. I don’t know about other people, but in my case it was pretty weak in terms of relieving pain. That wasn’t very surprising, but even so.
My Final Verdict – Is It Too Cheap To Be True?
Short answer: No, it’s 100% legit, but it’s a pretty weak supplement overall. At least for someone with chronic joint pain or arthritis, I don’t think it could do much in terms of pain.
It has a low quantity of turmeric per pill and it doesn’t have any bioperine. The quantity of curcuminoides is really good, but that’s not enough to compensate the lack of bioperine. Overall, it’s extremely cheap, so I can’t say it’s not worth buying.
My personal answer: In my opinion, it’s worth $7, but not more. I don’t think it can do much for arthritis, so I personally would not recommend it. I know it’s cheap, but I can’t recommend something that didn’t work out for me.
So I’m not going to buy it again, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad product. As I said, for $7, it’s not a bad choice. But if you have arthritis or joint pain, it’s probably too weak to help you.
Anyway, if you think it could work for you, I think you should give it a try. You would at most be losing $7, which is almost nothing.
I have a personal recommendation, but it costs around $22, just like most supplements. So if you want something that really works and you’re willing to pay a bit more than $7, that’s what I recommend you. If not, I think you should give Nature Bounty’ product a shot and see what it can do.
