Research
Micronutrients & recovery
Curcumin supplementation (400 mg/day) reduces biological inflammation (CK, TNF-α, IL-8) following eccentric exercise in healthy subjects, though it does not significantly reduce subjective muscle soreness.
If you do intense eccentric exercise, taking 400 mg of curcumin daily starting 2 days before and ending 4 days after can significantly lower your blood markers of muscle damage and inflammation. However, you might not feel less sore, as subjective pain relief was not consistently observed.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Curcumin supplementation resulted in significantly smaller increases in creatine kinase (CK) (−48%), TNF-α (−25%), and IL-8 (−21%) following exercise compared to the placebo. No significant differences in IL-6, IL-10, or quadriceps muscle soreness between conditions were observed.
Why this rating
Based on small pilot studies (n=28, n=20) with mixed results on subjective outcomes.
Source
Curcumin: A Review of Its Effects on Human Health
Susan Hewlings et al. · Foods · 2017
DOI 10.3390/foods6100092
narrative_reviewCited 2,545×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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