You stopped noticing it a long time ago. The coffee goes on, two pills come out of the bottle, and you take them with the first cup so your knees are ready by the time you reach the stairs.

Maybe it started after a fall, or after one long Saturday in the garden. Either way, it's been years now. The bottle has its own spot next to the coffee pot, and you buy the big size because it works out cheaper per pill.

Before your next refill, do one thing you've probably never bothered with. Pick up the box and read the side of it.

What the side of the box says

That panel is called Drug Facts. On a regular store-brand ibuprofen box, under the heading "Stomach bleeding warning," the first line reads: "This product contains an NSAID, which may cause severe stomach bleeding."

Right under that, the box lists who is more likely to have that bleeding. The first item on the list is being "age 60 or older." The last is taking it "for a longer time than directed."

So what counts as directed? The same box spells it out: 1 tablet every 4 to 6 hours, and no more than 6 in 24 hours unless a doctor tells you otherwise. Further down, under "Stop use and ask a doctor," it tells you to stop and ask a doctor if your pain "lasts more than 10 days."

The math on two pills a morning

Ten days is the line printed on the box. If you take two pills every morning, that's 730 pills a year, and more than 7,000 over ten years of mornings.

Your kidneys are on the box too. In the "Ask a doctor before use" section, kidney disease is listed right next to high blood pressure and heart disease.

The FDA requires those warnings on every box. Most of us stopped reading them somewhere around the first purchase.

A reader in an online arthritis forum described where her years on it left her:

"Ibuprofen helped at first... my stomach is a mess from taking it for years."

If that sounds like your kitchen, the rest of this page is for you. It's about a 2014 trial that put a turmeric extract up against ibuprofen, and about why the turmeric you may have tried before wasn't what they used.

367 people and the most ibuprofen the box allows

In 2014, the journal Clinical Interventions in Aging published a trial run at several medical centers. It enrolled 367 adults with painful knees.¹

For four weeks, one group took 1,200 mg of ibuprofen a day. Look at your box again: that's six of the 200 mg tablets, the most it allows in 24 hours without a doctor. The other group took a turmeric extract.

After four weeks, the turmeric extract had done as well on knee pain as the full over-the-counter dose of ibuprofen.

The result came out in a medical journal and mostly stayed there. Nobody prints it on a pharmacy shelf, so unless a doctor brought it up, there's a good chance this is the first you've heard of it.

The first words of the warning

One more line from your box belongs next to that result. The stomach bleeding warning opens with "This product contains an NSAID." Turmeric extract comes from a root and isn't in that drug class, so that warning was never written about it.

Researchers have also pooled 66 randomized trials of curcumin, the main active compound in turmeric. Across those trials, curcumin lowered three blood markers the body uses to signal inflammation: CRP, TNF-alpha and IL-6.² Those are numbers on a blood test, so you won't feel them move. They show what curcumin is working on underneath the ache.

Then why did the turmeric you tried do nothing?

If you already gave turmeric a try, felt nothing and gave up on it, that was a fair call, given what's in a lot of those bottles.

The people in the trial took an extract. Many supermarket turmeric capsules hold ground root, the same yellow powder you'd find in the spice aisle. Ground root is only 2 to 5% curcuminoids, the compounds the joint research is about, so the number on the front of the bottle and the amount you get can be far apart.

Both bottles can say 1,000 mg on the front. One of them gives you up to 47 times more curcuminoids.

Read the bottle in your cabinet

If your old bottle is still around, read its Supplement Facts panel. If it says root or powder and lists no percentage of curcuminoids, you were taking the spice.

So before any turmeric earns a spot next to your coffee pot, it should pass two tests:

1. A real dose. That means an extract standardized to 95% curcuminoids, with the percentage printed on the label.
2. A way to absorb it. Curcumin dissolves in fat, so a capsule of dry powder starts behind. Look for the extract carried in oil, black pepper extract, and directions to take it with a meal. Black pepper extract raised curcumin absorption in a human study.³

The formula in the headline

Curcuma Labs Pure Turmeric Curcumin 95 passes both, and every amount in it is printed on the label.

Curcuma Labs Pure Turmeric Curcumin 95

• 1,000 mg of turmeric extract per serving, standardized to 95% curcuminoids (about 950 mg)
• Black pepper extract (BioPerine®)
• The extract carried in coconut MCT oil inside a softgel, because curcumin dissolves in fat
• Ginger root, bee propolis and vitamin C, with no proprietary blend
• Organically grown roots, extracted without solvents
• No fillers, artificial colors or synthetic preservatives
• 3 softgels a day, taken with food

This is the Supplement Facts panel from the bottle, the same panel to check on any turmeric you buy.

There's one more thing on this bottle you can read. Every batch is tested by an independent lab for potency, heavy metals and microbes, and the certificate of analysis is published. Point your phone's camera at the QR code on the bottle and you can read the report.

Your painkiller box lists what can go wrong. This bottle lets you see what the lab measured.

How to take it, and when to judge it

Take 3 softgels a day with a meal. Dinner is easy to remember, and it usually has some fat in it, which curcumin needs.

Then be patient with it. Ibuprofen is dosed by the hour, one tablet every 4 to 6 hours according to the box. A turmeric extract is taken every day and builds over weeks, so give it at least four, the same stretch the trial ran.

Why one bottle won't settle it

One bottle is 30 servings, about a month. Since the formula is meant to be taken for 4 to 8 weeks, a single bottle runs out right about when people start to judge it.

The bundles cover the full stretch:

• Buy 2, Get 1 Free gets you three bottles, about 90 days.
• Buy 3, Get 2 Free gets you five bottles, and readers save up to 71%.

Both come with the 60-day money-back guarantee, and it covers opened bottles. You can take it every day for eight weeks and still ask for your money back if the stairs feel the same.

The bundles are available in limited quantities, and the offer can end.

Before the next refill

If nothing changes, next month looks like this one: two pills with the coffee, out of a box that tells you to ask a doctor if you need it for more than 10 days.

Or you can give a real dose of turmeric extract four weeks and pay attention. Maybe the garden gets weeded on a Saturday without a pill first. Maybe you get down on the rug with the grandkids and back up again without planning how.