Nature’s Formulas is a supplement company that sells one supplement at the time of updating this article, which is called "Curcumin180." The brand's website makes aggressive health claims we consider unscientific. The brand also appears to fake customer testimonials, which we'll discuss below.
In this review we’ll analyze the formulation of Curcumin180, as well as the health claims made by the brand, and explain why we recommend avoiding this brand.
Fake Testimonials
Nature’s Formulas has a Testimonials page on their website featuring fake user headshots plagiarized from across the web. Their fake testimonial from user “Steve Alldis”, for example, comes from a German website linked here. We consider this to be incredibly unethical, and it's also likely illegal. This is such a red flag that we would recommend consumers avoid this business for this practice alone.
Another testimonials image on their homepage features a woman's face that's sourced from an Adobe stock image. Based on the fact that several of the testimonials on their site are easily proven to be fraudulent, we could consider all of the testimonials on their site to be fraudulent.
No Social Media
The Twitter link in the footer of Nature’s Formula’s site links not to a company Twitter page, but to the page of a man named Demetrice Etheridge. This is another sign of incompetence and unprofessionalism by the brand. We're unsure what they're even attempting to achieve in this case.
Perhaps this is the founder of the company, but at the time of updating this article, there is no reference to Nature's Formulas on the Twitter page.
The Instagram link in their website footer leads to an account with one follower and no posts, titled “Proven Health.”
False Health Claims
Nature’s Formulas claims in their marketing that their “Curcumin180” product is “180x more effective.” The brand doesn't claim what the product is more effective than, but we're assuming they're comparing the product to curcumin, which is the active chemical compound in turmeric extract. The brand provides no proof that their product is more effective at all than standard curcumin.
While bioperine or black pepper extract, which is included in the product formulation, does increase curcumin bioavailabilty significantly based on medical research, it doesn’t increase it nearly 180x. Nor has the brand funded any clinical trials comparing their product to curcumin.
Absorption also doesn’t directly translate to effectiveness. Efficacy is based on the response of real patients to a supplement or drug. If supplement A causes 10% pain reduction and supplement B causes 20% pain reduction, then supplement B can claim it's 2x more effective than supplement A.
Because Nature's Formulas provides no citations or proof of their efficacy claims, we consider them to be inaccurate health claims and false advertising.
No Public Team
We believe that legitimate supplement brands will want to highlight their founders and the scientists on their team because this builds consumer trust. In the case of Nature's Formulas, there is no information on their website about any member of their team at the time of updating this article.
On their website's About page, which typically would contain information about the founding members of a business, Nature's Formulas instead publishes strange and unproven claims about research partnerships.
The brand claims that they "work with leading research centers" to "create formulations based on scientific facts." They include logos of legitimate medical institutions like Harvard University, but they provide no proof that they have any relationship with these institutions.
We do not believe these uncited claims, and consider them a further example of deceptive and false advertising.
Unproven Testing Claims
Nature’s Formulas claims they test their products for quality and purity at an independent third-party facility. Since they don’t publish any of these tests, or even report on them, we would consider that unlikely. If a brand spends money for independent product testing, and the results are positive, why wouldn’t the brand want to share those test results with consumers?
In light of all of the other information about this brand highlighted previously in this article, we believe it's logical for consumers to distrust these testing claims.
Curcumin180 Review
Curcumin180 is an anti-inflammatory supplement with a core active ingredient of turmeric root extract at a dosage of 335 milligrams (mg). As we described in our recent review of another anti-inflammatory supplement called Heal n Soothe, the minimum effective therapeutic dose of turmeric extract for inflammation based on medical research appears to be around 1,000 mg, which is over 3x the amount in Nature's Formulas.
We don't understand why the brand would include the less potent turmeric root powder as an additional active ingredient when they're already using a dosage of turmeric root extract which we would consider underdosed.
Curcumin180 also contains boswellia extract at a dosage of 180 mg. While there does exist some research on this botanical compound as an anti-inflammatory, we cannot find any medical trials on humans proving it to be an effective anti-inflammatory at the dose included in Nature's Formulas. The brand also provides no proof that this ingredient is effective, so we will consider it ineffective.
Overall we consider this to be a low-quality formulation for an anti-inflammatory supplement, as we are unable to identify one active anti-inflammatory ingredient at an effective dose.
