Spice: A Turmeric and Curcumin Life Saver.

This is the tale of how misdiagnosis, inflammation and genes can turn your life upside down and how natural, holistic supplements like WillPowders’ Spice can change your life. 

Once upon a time, boy meets girl and they whiled away the hours, dreaming about the life they would create together.  Like most young couples, they naively envisioned a future filled with health, happiness and prosperity. And whilst for them, first came love, then came marriage, then came their boy in a baby carriage, something that could potentially devastate (and did for a bit) their lives came next. Inflammation so destructive that it could have seen my hubby in a wheelchair or worse, dead!

When my hubby was a child, my mother in law was at her whits end.  Her beautiful boy simply failed to thrive.  His knees were bigger than his thighs; he wouldn’t eat anything; he suffered horrendously with mouth ulcers; he contracted shingles, which is extremely rare and dangerous when you’re a child; he suffered from painful gut and digestive issues and his general quality of life was constantly compromised.  Trawling from doctor to doctor and putting her boy through every investigative procedure available to her, she constantly hit a brick wall of no answers, forced to submit herself to just doing her best for him.  The worry and blind ignorance that she was expected to raise her child in, kept her up at night, giving her no option but to conduct her own research.  Luckily, as a nurse, she was more adept in cutting through medical advice and research, but it wasn’t until her boy turned 30 that she started getting somewhere. 

As my husband and I started to think about starting a family of our own, and after many years of “reasonable” health - I say reasonable because he had just learned to live with the incessant pain and joint inflammation, my husband developed an infection in his elbow joint after he cut his finger gardening. Consequently, this resulted in him being admitted to hospital for over a week, as the infection began to track up his arm, making its way to his heart. In danger of becoming septic, doctors and nurses administered treatment, some that made him worse and some that made him better.  His hospital stay concluded with a diagnosis of Cellulitis, but my mother in law knew they were wrong. And she was right!  Upon returning home, I watched my husband’s body fight whatever war was raging inside him, and I desperately researched every supplement under the sun to try and help his body win. 

Things settled down for a bit so we got back on the baby train and to our delight, I fell pregnant straight away; however, every bug, every cut, every knock, every sleepless night resulted in some kind of flare up; my husband trudged through life feeling utterly drained, sometimes bed bound, sometimes working hard to ignore the pain or latest symptom that his secret disease manifested that day. He worked hard to not let whatever it was impact our boy and I, but it was easier said than done, and I always knew that it was a struggle. It just felt so unfair: here was a wonderful man, who I loved so much, someone who pushed his body to its limits, achieving great things like 100 mile charity walks, believing that events like this would nourish his body and soul when actually, it was only causing irreparable damage. He struggled through his 30s, desperate to contribute to family life as much as he could, but it always seemed to come at a cost, a cost to us, or to his health. 

Towards the end of the first year of being parents, the swelling in his joints really started to take hold and the MRI scans began.  Unable to walk, the scans showed severe inflammation in his joints, spine, and brain.  Doctors could tell us that there was what looked like a cyst on his brain that may need removing in the future, erosion of cartilage around his joints that had left huge spaces between his joints and the possibility that he would end up in a wheelchair eventually, but they still couldn’t tell us definitively what the hell was wrong with him, so we walked away with the diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis (a long-term condition in which the spine and other areas of the body become inflamed), but after years of research, my mother in law, husband and I still felt there was missing piece of the jigsaw.  

Having read everything there was to read and learning everything there was to learn, we were convinced he needed biological drugs to fight whatever was incapacitating him, but the computer said no and the doctor’s script refused to prescribe a 35 year old man the most expensive medication available.  Instead, he was forced to persevere with medication that further debilitated him for longer, until they were convinced it wasn’t working, which is when, we were told, they would explore a prescription for Methotrexate, a drug used for cancer treatment. 

When this day came, my husband was told that taking Methotrexate came with great responsibility.  We had to make a decision about having a second child and if this was something we both wanted, he would have to stop all medication for 6 months before we could try to conceive. Not only that, he would have to be conscious and vigilant when around pregnant women as Methotrexate had the power to adversely impact the health of a pregnancy.  The thought of my husband suffering so that we could add to our family just wasn’t an option for me and becoming radioactive wasn’t an option for him, so we made a decision to keep fighting for the Golden Chalice, The Biologicals. However, the rule was, when a random scan showed significant inflammation in three of his joints at the same time, the key holders to the biological vault may consider a prescription, but every scan was either localised to the pain he was experiencing or the latest steroid injection would mask what was going on behind the scenes - we just couldn’t win and the suffering continued. If it wasn’t contending with excruciating joint pain, or fighting horrendous infections, it was managing the damage the anti-inflammatories had done to his gut, resulting in taking even more medication to stop his gut lining from literally eroding. 

Life continued, we prevailed and so did the research; we finally reached a conclusion that explained everything my husband had endured.  The HLA-B27 Gene.  

‘The Role of HLA-B27 in Inflammatory Diseases

How HLA-B27 affects inflammatory diseases isn’t entirely clear. The prevailing theory – and the one with the most science to back it up – is that the gene changes the makeup of the gut microbiome – the trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that reside in the digestive tract. These vast communities of microbes control the immune system, and HLA-B27 may disrupt their finely tuned functioning. 

Whilst the damage of misdiagnosis and the prescription of what turned out to be toxic medication for my husband has left its mark, a mark so damaging that his body will never fully recover, he has been reborn, and his and my mother in law’s tenacity and refusal to just accept what they were being told, along with WillPowders’ Spice has been the only lottery win we will ever need. 

Spice is a powerful anti-inflammatory that derives from nature. Studies have shown curcumins may be more effective than prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs for rheumatoid arthritis or inflammatory diseases, and in my husband’s case, this couldn’t be more true. The active ingredients and advantages of curcumin have supported his digestion and gut, which is highly compromised due to carrying the HLA-B27 gene and helps to protect his joints from further damage.  His movement, especially in his hip, is limited, but with the help of Spice and therapeutic exercise, exercise that before Spice was too painful to endure, it continues to improve. Whilst he will still probably need to have a hip replacement one day, due to the damage that has already been done, his recovery and timeline has greatly improved thanks to Spice’s Turmeric, Curcumin and MSM, which has reduced oxidative stress and inflammation in his joints; it is a supplement that has given my family the healthy, happy and prosperous future we imagined when boy met girl.   

'Sometimes it felt like the solutions to my health issues were unobtainable and completely unachievable. The conflicting diagnoses and the speed at which my condition was progressing was heart breaking. I had a basic understanding that natural products could have an impact on reducing my inflammation and had taken turmeric in the past, but they never seemed to have much of an impact, which is why I wasn't confident about the effects Spice could have. I never in my wildest dreams thought it could completely eliminate prescribed medication.

Spice allows me to sleep because I'm no longer in constant pain and it allows me to live without the anxiety of a random flare. I'm climbing mountains again, which is something that is so important for my mental health. Gone is the anxiety, I lived with for too long, pertaining to my life span - Spice has been absolutely transformative for me and my family.'