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4 Tips to Choose Turmeric Supplements

Published on June 04, 2021


With insight from Susan Hirsch, MS, CNS, Gaia Herbs Formulation Manager

There’s a lot of talk about Turmeric lately. For good reason: It is an incredibly versatile spice in the kitchen—adding a bold, golden hue and warm, earthy taste to all manner of dishes.

It is also a powerful herb for your wellness routine, with the ability to support well-being in a variety of ways.* But though there’s a big buzz about it now, especially in the supplement world, Turmeric has actually been valued for whole-body health in traditional herbalism over thousands of years.*

At Gaia Herbs, we call upon this ancient wisdom to create our thoroughly modern wellness formulas, crafted with scientific expertise and designed to meet today’s needs, including our two brand-new delicious and convenient Turmeric Supreme® gummies!

Read on to learn how to cut through all the noise and identify what’s important to look out for, so you can choose the best Turmeric supplements to incorporate into your daily regimen.* And, discover what quality means to us—what sets Gaia Turmeric products apart from the rest.

4 Top Tips for Choosing the Best Turmeric Supplements

Gaia Herbs Turmeric Supreme Gummies

Opt for Quality-Tested Turmeric & Demand Transparency for Ingredients

Where and how the Turmeric in a supplement was grown matters—for your health and the health of our planet. Look for products made with sustainably or environmentally friendly grown Turmeric to ensure you are getting the beneficial constituents you want, without the toxic chemicals you don’t.

Here at Gaia, we are committed to ethical and responsible sourcing. The Turmeric in our products is grown using natural farming methods and is thoroughly quality-tested for pesticides, heavy metals, and other contaminants to ensure it meets our stringent standards.

It is cultivated with care by family farmers using agricultural practices that nurture the soil and help guarantee the production of Turmeric's active phytochemicals.*

We source from Nicaragua, Indonesia, and India, where conditions are the most ideal for growing Turmeric with the highest possible levels of botanical compounds.* Learn more about our Indonesian farm partners.

We value transparency and are committed to producing the highest-quality herbal products. That’s why we created meetyourherbs.com, the world’s first herb traceability platform. Enter the ID on your Turmeric supplement—or any Gaia Herbs product—to discover where the herb was grown and to see validation of its purity and potency.

Select Full Spectrum Formulas—Not Isolates

What exactly are these valuable constituents we keep mentioning? Turmeric contains curcuminoids, turmerones, and polysaccharides, compounds that are believed to be responsible for the herb’s beneficial impacts on health.* In fact, it’s the synergy between these components that is thought to enhance the plant’s overall benefits to well-being.*

Yet, many companies select an isolated curcumin extract for their Turmeric supplements. Often, you will even see the terms “Turmeric” and “curcumin” used interchangeably, though they do not mean the same thing.

Turmeric indicates the whole rhizome (underground stem) of the Curcuma longa plant, while curcumin refers to one of the three curcuminoids that—along with Turmeric's other beneficial components mentioned above—contribute to the herb’s ability to support health and wellness.*

At Gaia Herbs, we extract whole Turmeric root to create full spectrum formulas. That means our products contain all of Turmeric’s valuable compounds.

How can you tell if a product is full spectrum? On the Supplement Facts label for each of our Turmeric products, you’ll find the words “Turmeric (Curcuma longa) root extract” and not just “curcumin,” so you can rest assured you’re getting a supplement that delivers the best expression of the herb’s intention.*

If considering a Turmeric supplement from another company, we recommend looking at that product's Supplement Facts label first to verify that it does not list only curcumin in the active ingredients.

Educate Yourself About Absorption

To better understand why high-quality Turmeric supplements should be full spectrum formulas, it’s vital to know that by itself curcumin is not bioavailable—meaning the body is not able to absorb and use it to the greatest benefit.

As Gaia Herbs Formulation Manager Susan Hirsch, MS, CNS, explains: “Curcumin is amazing, but it is also like a car without wheels. Without its wheels, a car can’t go anywhere. When you take curcumin out of Turmeric and isolate it, you take off its wheels and render it unable to be transported to your tissues where it has the most impact. In this analogy, the wheels are the rest of the constituents in Turmeric; in addition to offering their own benefits, they aid in the efficacy and absorption of curcumin.*”

In other words, when it comes to a Turmeric supplement, she says, “It’s not about how much isolated curcumin you can pack into a product, but about how good the product’s wheels are!”

At Gaia, in addition to creating Turmeric formulas that utilize whole Turmeric root to deliver the full spectrum of compounds, as has been done for thousands of years in traditional herbalism, we also mimic ancient Ayurvedic methods by using black pepper in many of our products.

Black pepper enhances the absorption of Turmeric’s beneficial components to boost the bioavailability of the herb.* You’ll find it in our Golden Milk powder as well as our entire line of Turmeric Supreme Liquid Phyto-Caps®.

You won’t find black pepper in our new Turmeric Supreme® Adult Daily Gummies or Turmeric Supreme® Extra Strength Gummies, however. But that doesn’t mean they are any less absorbable than our other Turmeric products. They contain a special Turmeric extract that is ideal for the gummy format. 

It gives the herb “wheels” in the body and has been clinically proven to have superior absorption and bioavailability.* Keep reading to learn much more about these just-launched gummies!

Research the Company’s Extraction Methods

Some supplement companies use harsh solvents to obtain their herbal extracts—like hexane, acetone, ethyl acetate, and methanol. During the extraction process, these chemicals can get left behind in an herb and passed along to you in the product, ultimately leaving traces of unwanted toxins in your body and in the environment.

At Gaia Herbs, we have nothing to hide and everything to share. That’s why we make clear our promise to only use gentle, nontoxic extraction methods in our manufacturing processes to ensure the cleanest and safest possible products to support your health.*

Importantly, we also utilize extraction processes that preserve potency, are specific to the desired constituents for a supplement, and are designed to obtain the widest range of active compounds.

As has already been mentioned, this is especially important when it comes to Turmeric: We combine multiple extraction processes—including ethanol and water extraction and supercritical extraction, which uses recycled carbon dioxide—to ensure our supplements represent the full spectrum of beneficial components found in the whole plant.*

Discover Gaia Herbs Turmeric and Feel the Difference

Gaia Herbs Turmeric Supreme Family

Our Turmeric Supreme line is formulated to give you the support you need to maintain your healthy, active life.* We’re excited to introduce two brand-new Turmeric Supreme products: convenient, delicious (with a delightful citrus taste!), and easy-to-chew and swallow gummies that are Certified Organic, non-GMO verified, and sweetened only with real fruit—without any artificial colors or refined sugars.

The gummies are vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free. And as mentioned above, the full spectrum formulas are created with a high-quality whole Turmeric root extract that offers superior absorption and clinically proven bioavailability.*

Turmeric Supreme® Adult Daily Gummies

Our Turmeric Supreme® Adult Daily Gummies formula offers the daily support you need to stay active in just two tasty gummies, delivering 3.4 grams of Turmeric and 60 mg of total curcuminoids.* If you want extra support to reduce everyday wear and tear, you can take an additional serving or turn to our new Extra Strength gummies.*

Turmeric Supreme® Extra Strength Gummies

One three-gummy serving of our Turmeric Supreme® Extra Strength Gummies formula provides 6.6 grams of Turmeric and 95 mg of total curcuminoids to support a healthy inflammatory response in healthy individuals.*

At this dose, studies show the bioavailability-enhanced Turmeric extract we use is 24 times more absorbable and with more bioavailability over a longer time than a standard isolated curcuminoid extract.* In other words, you can feel confident you’re getting the extra support you need for your extra active life.*

Turmeric Supreme Liquid Phyto-Caps®

If you prefer classic capsules to gummies, we’ve got you covered with seven full spectrum condition-specific wellness solutions to meet your needs, with black pepper and lecithin for increased absorption: Turmeric Supreme® Extra Strength; Turmeric Supreme® Joint; Turmeric Supreme® Pain; Turmeric Supreme® Pain P.M.; Turmeric Supreme® Sinus Support; Turmeric Supreme® Heart; and Turmeric Supreme® Immune Support.*

So Many Reasons to Love Turmeric

Turmeric has long been one of Gaia Herbs’ best-selling herbs and is a perennial all-around favorite of our customers and team members for its ability to support the body in many ways.*

For more Gaia Herbs supplements containing Turmeric, view our full list of Turmeric products.

And if you want to read more about what makes Turmeric a top herb on our list, check out the following articles: