NovaSOL® Curcumin is a patented liquid micelle form of curcumin, the active compound in turmeric. Ordinary curcumin is famously hard for the body to absorb. It is fat-soluble, poorly water-soluble, and most of a dose passes straight through you. NovaSOL wraps curcumin inside microscopic droplets that stay stable in stomach acid and dissolve in water, so far more of it actually reaches your bloodstream. In a human crossover study it reached the blood roughly 185 times more effectively than unformulated curcumin powder, and it peaked in about one hour instead of seven and a half.
That is the short answer. Below is the longer one, including the part of the story most supplement pages leave out, which is what that 185× number actually measures, and what a recent independent study had to say about it.
Key takeaways
- Turmeric powder is not curcumin. Turmeric root is only about 2–5% curcuminoids by weight, so cooking with it delivers a negligible dose.
- Plain curcumin is barely absorbed. It is poorly soluble in water and rapidly broken down by the liver and gut wall.
- NovaSOL solves the absorption half of the problem using micelle technology developed by AQUANOVA AG in Germany, with research support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
- It outperforms BioPerine and phytosome delivery in head-to-head independent testing, and one 2025 study found black pepper extract added no measurable benefit at all.
- The famous “185×” figure is real but specific. It measures total curcuminoids in blood, most of which are conjugated metabolites. We explain what that means below, because you deserve to know.
What is NovaSOL Curcumin?
NovaSOL Curcumin is a curcumin raw ingredient made by AQUANOVA AG, a German company specialising in solubilisation technology. Rather than changing the curcumin molecule itself, NovaSOL changes the vehicle that carries it.
The technology builds a micelle, a droplet roughly 30 nanometres across, thousands of times smaller than a grain of salt. The droplet has a water-friendly outside and a fat-friendly inside. Curcumin, which hates water, sits protected in the centre while the outside of the droplet mixes freely with the watery contents of your digestive tract.
Two properties make this work in practice:
- It survives your stomach. Stomach acid sits around pH 1.5–3.5, harsh enough to destabilise many delivery systems. The NovaSOL micelle stays intact through it.
- It presents curcumin in solution. Your small intestine absorbs dissolved substances far more readily than suspended particles. Curcumin arrives already dissolved rather than as a clump of powder waiting to be broken down.
The result is a clear, water-soluble liquid rather than the gritty yellow powder most people picture. If you have read our introduction to curcumin, this is the piece that turns a promising compound into one your body can meaningfully take up.
Why ordinary turmeric and curcumin barely work
Turmeric has been used in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine for well over a thousand years, and modern interest in it is genuine. The problem has never really been whether curcumin does anything interesting in a laboratory. The problem is getting it out of the capsule and into you.
Three obstacles stack up:
1. Turmeric is mostly not curcumin. Dried turmeric root is roughly 2–5% curcuminoids. To get the curcumin dose used in a typical study from curry powder alone, you would need to eat an implausible quantity of it every day.
2. Curcumin will not dissolve in water. Your digestive tract is a watery environment. A compound that refuses to dissolve in it largely passes through unabsorbed.
Whatever does get absorbed is rapidly modified. The gut wall and liver attach sugar and sulfate groups to curcumin almost immediately, a process called conjugation. This is your body’s standard method for making foreign compounds water-soluble so they can be excreted.
Traditional cooking worked around the first two obstacles intuitively. Golden milk combines turmeric with fat (coconut or whole milk) and black pepper, both of which genuinely help. Modern supplements industrialised the pepper trick using BioPerine®, a standardised piperine extract. As you will see, the research on whether that trick works has not aged well.
Want the short version?
OptimaEarth Liquid Gold uses NovaSOL Curcumin: 1,000 mg per two-softgel serving, no black pepper extract required. 60 softgels, free shipping across the USA.
What the research actually shows
The 2014 University of Hohenheim study
The study behind almost every NovaSOL claim you will read online is Schiborr and colleagues, published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research in 2014. It is worth knowing what it did.
Twenty-three healthy adults, 13 women and 10 men, took a single 500 mg dose of curcuminoids in three different forms, in random order, with at least a week between each. Researchers then measured curcumin in their blood over the following 24 hours.
Measured by total exposure over time (the area under the concentration curve, the standard pharmacokinetic yardstick), the results were:
| Form of curcumin | Increase vs. plain powder | Time to peak |
|---|---|---|
| Unformulated curcumin powder | baseline | 7.5 hours |
| Micronised powder | 9× | 8.8 hours |
| Liquid micelles (NovaSOL type) | 185× | 1.1 hours |
There was also a notable sex difference: the increase was around 277× in women and 114× in men, which the authors attributed to differences in liver enzyme activity and body composition, and flagged as needing further study.
Full disclosure, because it matters: this study was funded by a German Federal Ministry of Education and Research grant (01EA1334A), and one of its co-authors is the founder and CEO of AQUANOVA, who holds the patents on the micelle technology. The data analysis was carried out at the University of Hohenheim. We think the study is solid, but you should weigh who paid for it, and we would rather tell you than have you discover it elsewhere.
What “185 times” does and doesn’t mean
Here is the part that most pages selling this ingredient skip.
That 185× figure measures total curcuminoids in the blood. Before analysis, the blood samples are treated with an enzyme that strips off the sugar and sulfate groups your body attached during conjugation. So the number counts both free curcumin and its conjugated metabolites together.
This matters because conjugated curcumin is water-soluble by design, which is the point of conjugation, and that makes it poor at crossing cell membranes. Most researchers regard conjugation as an inactivating step. So a large “total curcumin” number does not automatically mean a large amount of biologically active curcumin.
You will also see NovaSOL products advertised as delivering “the equivalent of 10–15 grams of curcumin.” That comes from multiplying a 60 mg curcuminoid dose by 185. The arithmetic is fine; the framing oversells it, and we do not use it.
What an independent 2025 study found
In June 2025, researchers at Amsterdam UMC published a pharmacokinetic study and critical reappraisal of enhanced-bioavailability curcumin formulations in iScience. It was not industry-funded, and it was explicitly sceptical. It names the “185×” marketing claim in its introduction as one of the things it set out to test.
Its central criticism is the one above: fold-increase claims are built on total curcumin, and the free fraction that actually does the work remains very low. The authors argue that free curcumin levels from every formulation they tested fall far short of what laboratory studies suggest is needed for a direct biological effect. That is a serious argument and we are not going to wave it away.
But the same study’s data is also the strongest independent evidence NovaSOL has. Testing five formulations head to head, the researchers found:
- NovaSOL was the only formulation with detectable free, unconjugated curcumin. The other four, including a standard extract at 2,400 mg and the same extract with added piperine, were below the detection limit in every participant at every time point.
- NovaSOL was absorbed almost completely. Only about 0.6% of the dose was recovered in stool, compared with 13–47% for the other formulations. The rest of them were largely passing straight through.
- Piperine did nothing measurable. Adding black pepper extract produced no improvement in either free or total curcumin exposure.
So where does that leave you? Our honest read: on the question of which delivery form gets curcumin out of your gut and into your blood, micellar curcumin wins decisively, including in testing by researchers who set out to debunk it. On the larger question of how much clinical benefit that translates into, the science is genuinely unsettled, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling harder than the evidence allows.
One further note from that study worth passing on: when the researchers assayed the capsules, several products contained less than their labels claimed. It is a reminder to buy from a manufacturer that third-party tests its batches.
NovaSOL vs. BioPerine vs. phytosome: how the delivery systems compare
Four approaches dominate the shelf. Here is how they differ.
| Approach | How it works | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Plain turmeric / curcumin extract | Nothing added; relies on the powder dissolving on its own | Very poorly absorbed; most of the dose is excreted |
| With BioPerine® / black pepper | Piperine is thought to slow the breakdown of curcumin | The 2025 independent study found no measurable benefit; some people react badly to piperine |
| Phytosome (e.g. Meriva®) | Curcumin bound to lecithin phospholipids | A genuine improvement over plain extract, but well behind micellar in direct comparisons |
| NovaSOL® liquid micelle | Curcumin dissolved inside an acid-stable, water-dispersible micelle | Costs more to manufacture; best taken with food (see below) |
The practical upshot: if you are currently taking a turmeric supplement that lists black pepper extract on the label, the pepper is probably not earning its place. That is not our opinion. It is the finding of researchers with no commercial stake in the answer.
What curcumin is used for
Curcumin is one of the most-studied plant compounds in nutrition science, with thousands of published papers. Most of that research is preliminary, covering laboratory work, animal studies, and small human trials, and results are frequently mixed.
Within what a dietary supplement may properly claim, curcumin is most commonly taken to:
- Support a healthy inflammatory response. This is curcumin’s best-known property and the reason most people take it.
- Support joint comfort and mobility. The most frequent reason our own customers report buying it.
- Provide antioxidant support. Curcumin acts as an antioxidant and supports the body’s own antioxidant defences.
- Support general wellbeing as part of a balanced diet.
What curcumin is not: a treatment for any disease. You will find pages online claiming curcumin treats depression, prevents Alzheimer’s, lowers blood sugar or fights cancer. Those claims are not established, and in the United States it is not lawful for a supplement seller to make them. We used to state some of them on this page ourselves, and we have removed them. If you are managing a health condition, that is a conversation for your doctor, not a supplement label.
For more on the individual compounds involved, see our guide to the eight benefits of curcumin.
How to take NovaSOL curcumin
- Follow the label. For OptimaEarth Liquid Gold, a serving is two softgels providing 1,000 mg of NovaSOL Curcumin.
- Take it with food. In the 2014 study, mild nausea was the most commonly reported effect in the micellar group, unsurprising given how much more is being absorbed. Taking it with a meal substantially reduces this.
- Be consistent. Curcumin is not a painkiller and does not work dose-by-dose. Most people who report a benefit describe it building over several weeks.
- Do not assume more is better. Higher doses do not appear to raise free curcumin levels proportionally, and exceeding the labelled dose is not advisable.
Who should be cautious
Curcumin is well tolerated by most people, but it is not right for everyone. Speak to your doctor before taking it if you:
- Have gallstones, gallbladder disease, or a bile duct obstruction, since curcumin can stimulate bile production
- Take blood-thinning medication, or have a bleeding disorder, since curcumin has mild antiplatelet effects
- Have surgery scheduled. The usual advice is to stop at least two weeks beforehand
- Are pregnant or breastfeeding
- Take prescription medication of any kind, since curcumin can affect how some drugs are metabolised
- Have a known allergy to turmeric or any listed ingredient
Always read the full label before use.
Where to buy NovaSOL curcumin
NovaSOL is a branded raw ingredient, so it appears in products from a number of brands. If you are comparing them, check three things: that the label names NovaSOL specifically rather than just “high absorption”; that it states the actual curcuminoid content per serving; and that the manufacturer third-party tests its batches.
OptimaEarth Liquid Gold Curcumin is our own NovaSOL formulation: 1,000 mg of NovaSOL Curcumin per two-softgel serving, 60 softgels per bottle, no black pepper extract, manufactured in the USA in a GMP-compliant facility and third-party tested. It is rated 4.67 out of 5 across 43 customer ratings, and US shipping is free.
OptimaEarth Liquid Gold Curcumin
$36.99 $29.99
60 softgels · 1,000 mg NovaSOL per serving · Free USA shipping
Frequently asked questions
What is NovaSOL curcumin?
NovaSOL Curcumin is a patented liquid micelle formulation of curcumin developed by AQUANOVA AG in Germany. It encases curcumin in microscopic water-dispersible droplets that remain stable in stomach acid, allowing far more of it to be absorbed than ordinary curcumin powder.
What are the benefits of taking NovaSOL curcumin?
NovaSOL’s benefit over other curcumin forms is absorption. It is taken to support a healthy inflammatory response, joint comfort and mobility, and antioxidant defences. Because so much more reaches the bloodstream, a much smaller dose is needed than with unformulated curcumin.
Is NovaSOL curcumin really 185 times more bioavailable?
A 2014 human crossover study found a 185-fold increase in total curcuminoid exposure compared with unformulated curcumin powder. That figure measures total curcuminoids, including conjugated metabolites, so it should not be read as 185 times the biological effect. Independent 2025 research confirmed micellar curcumin is absorbed far more completely than other forms, while cautioning against over-reading fold-increase claims.
What is the best brand of curcumin to take?
Look for a product that names its delivery technology explicitly, states the curcuminoid content per serving on the label, and is third-party tested. Formulations using micellar delivery such as NovaSOL currently show the strongest absorption data in independent head-to-head testing.
Is NovaSOL better than turmeric with BioPerine?
On the available evidence, yes. A 2025 independent study found adding piperine produced no measurable improvement in curcumin absorption, while micellar curcumin was the only formulation tested that produced detectable free curcumin in the blood.
Where can I buy NovaSOL curcumin?
NovaSOL appears in products from several brands. OptimaEarth Labs Liquid Gold Curcumin provides 1,000 mg of NovaSOL Curcumin per two-softgel serving and is available here with free US shipping.
When should I take it?
With a meal. Micellar curcumin is absorbed efficiently enough that taking it on an empty stomach causes mild nausea in some people, which food largely prevents.
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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This article is for general information only and is not medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting any supplement, particularly if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, taking medication, or managing a health condition. Individual results vary.
References
Schiborr C, Kocher A, Behnam D, Jandasek J, Toelstede S, Frank J. “The oral bioavailability of curcumin from micronized powder and liquid micelles is significantly increased in healthy humans and differs between sexes.” Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, 2014;58(3):516–527. doi:10.1002/mnfr.201300724
Kroon MAGM, van Laarhoven HWM, Swart EL, van Tellingen O, Kemper EM. “A pharmacokinetic study and critical reappraisal of curcumin formulations enhancing bioavailability.” iScience, 2025;28(6):112575. doi:10.1016/j.isci.2025.112575
Last reviewed: [[DATE]] · Written by the OptimaEarth Labs editorial team [[OR NAMED AUTHOR – see notes]]
