The magical properties of turmeric can ease countless inflammatory diseases

After knee surgery at the age of 16, Hal Robson-Kanu, the West Bromwich Albion winger, was told his dreams of becoming a pro-footballer were over, but then he discovered turmeric, writes Christine Manby

Illustration by Tom Ford

According to Public Health England, more than 30 million working days are lost in the UK each year due to pain caused by musculoskeletal conditions. Earlier this year, two members of my own family were put out of action by joint pain. In both instances, the GP’s response was to prescribe heavy-duty painkillers and Nsaids (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs). In both instances, my loved ones decided not to take them. The side effects of the prescribed medicines – namely constipation and nausea – were deemed even worse than the back and hip pain they’d been prescribed to fix.

Hal Robson-Kanu, the West Bromwich Albion winger, believes there’s an alternative to prescription medication for joint pain. At just 16, Robson-Kanu was told by a surgeon that his dream of becoming a professional footballer was over. Robson-Kanu had just had the second of two knee surgeries and the surgeon predicted that he would never be able to play without pain again. It was time to consider a different career. Robson-Kanu knew what lay ahead of him. After the first surgery, it had taken him a whole year to get back into training. But he was determined not to give up on his ambitions.

Defying the surgeon’s pronouncement, Robson-Kanu went back to the pitch, even though getting up in the morning was agony. By the end of a training session, his knee would be swollen like a balloon, leaving him barely able to walk. Another doctor prescribed anti-inflammatories. For a while, Robson-Kanu says he was “taking them like smarties”. They masked the pain but they had adverse effects. After three months, he was suffering from constant nausea and headaches. He was passing blood in his urine. Describing the time, he says: “I was between a rock and a hard place.”

It was Robson-Kanu’s father, Rechi, who decided that enough was enough and began to look for a different way to ease his son’s pain. He threw himself into researching natural remedies, reading up on the anti-inflammatory effects of various fruits, vegetables and herbs. He plumped on turmeric, a rhizome from the ginger family commonly used in South Asian, Middle Eastern and African cooking. Bright yellow or orange in colour, turmeric has a long history in medicine too. Its active ingredient is curcumin, a polyphenol, which has anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

Rechi blended turmeric into a smoothie with pineapple and water-melon and black pepper – piperine – to increase the bio-availability of the curcumin. Robson-Kanu remembers the first time he drank the mixture. “It was so strong and potent but I had no other options.” His father persuaded him to down the mix every day for a few months.

After two months, he thought the swelling of his knee was subsiding. After three months, he found he could get out of bed first thing and walk to the shower with no pain. Still Robson-Kanu was unconvinced that Rechi’s blend of fruit and turmeric could really be making the difference. He stopped taking it for a week, during which time his symptoms came back with a vengeance.

Turmeric is fibrous and difficult to juice. It leaves your hands stained. We went through at least a hundred blenders

Rechi’s blend became Robson-Kanu’s secret weapon. Once he was taking it again, he began noticing that not only had his knee stopped hurting – despite his having dropped his prescribed anti-inflammatories altogether – he also didn’t get run down any more. He was able to recover from a training session more quickly than his team mates. They started to ask how he did it. Meanwhile, Robson-Kanu’s doctors could only shrug and say they had no idea what was going on: the young footballer who had been written off was soon playing for Reading FC and would later play for Wales. Three-and-a-half years ago, more than a decade after Robson-Kanu added turmeric to his daily routine, he saw turmeric shots in the grocery department of Harrods. It seemed like a breakthrough. His father’s blend was effective but making it fresh every day was a hassle.

“Turmeric is fibrous and difficult to juice. It leaves your hands stained. We went through at least a hundred blenders.” Robson-Kanu bought all the shots in the shop hoping that his blending days were over but as soon as he tasted one, he knew it was a waste of time. There was just two per cent turmeric in an apple-juice base. Robson-Kanu knew that this was no substitute for his dad’s recipe. It was time to take it to the wider world.

The Turmeric Co opened in 2018 with a production facility based in West London. The company’s turmeric is sourced from Nigeria, where Robson-Kanu’s father grew up. Since its launch, the company has supplied shots to the England rugby team. Less exalted customers can buy the product on a subscription basis, delivered direct in chilled packaging.

It’s also stocked in Whole Foods and Planet Organic. For the moment, it’s relatively expensive – though not when compared to other health drinks or the mythical “daily latte” – but Robson-Kanu hopes that as business expands, the price point will drop, making it accessible to everyone. Recently, Robson-Kanu discovered that his grandfather, who died in the Nigerian war, had been a herbalist, using the plants he found near his village to create remedies for his neighbours. Robson-Kanu is passionate about continuing the family tradition of healing.

It would be easy to dismiss Robson-Kanu’s experience as anecdotal but the scientific research in support of curcumin as found in turmeric’s health benefits is building year-on-year. It’s not just for athletes.

In a 2008 study, researchers at the cytokine research laboratory at the University of Texas Cancer Centre, wrote: “In various chronic illnesses in which inflammation is known to play a major role, curcumin has been shown to exhibit therapeutic potential. These diseases include Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, cerebral injury, CVDs, cancer, allergy, asthma, bronchitis, colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, renal ischemia, psoriasis, diabetes, obesity, depression, fatigue, and Aids.’

That’s a pretty impressive list. More recently, a 2017 review of the most recent research into turmeric, collated by Susan Hewlings of Central Michigan University and sports nutrition expert Douglas Kalman concludes: “A relatively low dose can provide health benefits for people that do not have diagnosed health conditions.”

I began my own experiment with turmeric a couple of years ago. Hitting my forties, I experienced hormonally triggered migraines for the very first time. For a while, I was able to keep them under control with aspirin, but then the aspirin itself became the problem, leaving me nauseous and prone to bruising at the slightest knock.

Having read about curcumin’s anti-inflammatory properties, I popped a couple of turmeric tablets instead. To my surprise, my migraine seemed to fade away. No headache. No nausea. No bruises. Result. But I guess practitioners of Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, who have been prescribing curcumin for millennia, could have predicted that. As the University of Texas study put it, curcumin is an “age-old Nsaid”.