Picture of regular store-bought turmeric powder. Dull-yellow or brown-orange color, indicating the powder has been exposed to air for a long time. This type of turmeric is only suitable as a food-coloring agent and not as a supplement.

**The bright and lovely color of fresh, unoxidized turmeric root. It’s almost glowing, due to curcumin’s ability to convert UV light to yellow.**

Bad News: Regular, Store-Bought Turmeric Has Very Poor Gut Absorption. Most of It Is Oxidized and Only Suitable for Food Coloring

We have all heard that turmeric is great – it promotes radiant skin, weight loss, has many cognitive and brain benefits and can work better for pain than over the counter pain relievers! Recently, some publications explored the effectiveness of turmeric for depression and the results were very promising.
Virtually all benefit-showing studies done on turmeric, use ethanol-aqueous extracts from fresh roots. This is very different from regular, store-bought turmeric. Gut absorption of turmeric is quite low (study) and gets even lower with age, because of the reduced ability of the liver to produce bile.
Fortunately, there are ways around this! Let’s explore some great options to get all the benefits of turmeric, without having access to lab-grade turmeric extracts.

Best Option: Use Full-Range Micelle Turmeric to Get All The Health Benefits Turmeric is Known For! (Link)

This is arguably the most effective way to put turmeric in your body and actually feel, notice and experience the actual benefits turmeric is known for. Micelle turmeric uses extremely tiny droplets(about 200 times smaller than the emulsion droplets that butter consists of for example), suspended in a liquid to bypass the digestive process and ‘transport’ the turmeric straight into your cells, where it can do it’s magic – it’s the closest thing to an ‘anti-aging injection’ that you’ll find. Even compared to high-quality unoxidized turmeric extract, micelle turmeric has up to 200-times higher absorption rate and quickly gets delivered around the cells in the body.
As amazing as micelle liposomal turmeric is, it does have a slight downside – its higher price. Since making micelle solutions requires lab testing to confirm that particle size is small enough to get absorbed right through membranes, this does raise the cost slightly.
Micelle turmeric is ingested normally(orally) – because of it’s high concentration and bio-availability, only a few drops are required to experience the effects.

Option 2: Find Fresh Turmeric Root, Blend With Some Water and Coconut oil, and Add Black Pepper

The second best way to absorb turmeric is to simply get a high-quality powder or just fresh root. It’s impossible to tell with a 100% certainty how good certain turmeric powder is, without lab testing, but the color of the powder is a good indication – look for a bright, vibrant orange or yellow color. Low quality turmeric is immediately obvious by it’s ‘dullness’ – it just doesn’t look that good. If you find a high-quality powder, you can use that to make turmeric milk(recipe), which has decent absorption, due to the fat content of the milk.