The Magical Anti-Inflammatory Power of Boswellia Serrata

Mike Uhrlaub
14 min readAug 2, 2021

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Boswellia Serrata has the power to help with so many inflammatory diseases and symptoms. But most people have never even heard of it. So today I am going to share with you what Boswellia Serrata is and how it could change your life. As always, before we get into the details I want to share a little story with you.

A couple of weeks ago my son, Garrett was competing at the state trap shoot in Cedar Falls, Iowa and we had an amazing experience.

In this competition he had to shoot one-hundred targets in the morning and then come back to shoot one-hundred targets in the afternoon. This was the most he has ever shot in one day. Back in April and beginning of May he was only shooting about 50 targets in the competitions. At the end of May, they worked up to where he was shooting a hundred targets. But now he had to do 200 targets in one day! That was more than he had ever shot so I knew this was going to be a challenge for him.

In the morning he shot really well hitting several personal bests and we were both really looking forward to the afternoon. Well, it was starting to get hot and the day was starting to take its toll. When he got to shooting the second round in the afternoon, I could completely tell something was off. He was not shooting as well. It was really hot and he was tired, but I could tell there was something else bothering him. Garrett is only 12 and I can read his face as I was watching him. There was really something else bothering him but he wasn’t saying anything.

The Physical Therapist in me Jumps Out

At first, I thought he was frustrated because he wasn’t shooting as well as he did in the morning. But when he came off the firing line to reload for his last round of targets, he said “Dad, I can’t feel my shoulder.”

I’m like, are you okay? Can you move it? He said he can move it. Any tingling in your

fingertips. — Me

No, my fingertips are fine. — Garrett

Can you pull the trigger? — Me

Yes, I can pull my trigger. — Garret (It was his right hand and right shoulder.)

I said, “Well, Garrett, we’ve got 25 targets left to do. Your team is depending on you, you know?”

I could read his face. He did not want to go back out there and shoot those last 25 targets. His shoulder hurt. It was a long day. He was hot and tired. He couldn’t feel anything in his right shoulder. The kid was just hurting so I asked him what he wanted to do. He said, “Well, I got to go back out there. My team, my squad’s depending on me.”

So, he did it. He bucked up and went back out there to shoot his last 25 targets. He did quite well with the last 25. At the end of the competition, I was talking with him a little bit. I found out during one of the earlier targets, he did not quite keep the butt of the gun centered in the pocket of his shoulder. Also, he let his face pull off the stock a little bit as he was swinging the gun to hit the target on the left. The result was that the gun just kicked back right into his shoulder and of course it bruised it. That is why he couldn’t feel his shoulder.

I Was So Proud of Him

Even though he was hurting and knew he made a mistake, he learned from it. He just sucked it up and got back out there to finish the shoot. I’ll admit…As a parent, it was really hard for me to sit back and watch him fight through his pain and frustration. I really wanted to get in there and take all pain way for him. I wanted to make things better, but I couldn’t. This was something he had to work through on his own. I realized this was his first-year shooting trap. He’s growing and learning a new sport. Sometimes this growth can be a little uncomfortable.

As we were driving home that afternoon it really got me thinking and reflecting back on what happened throughout the day. Growth and healing do not occur in your comfort zones. This is true in life too. If you truly want to heal, grow, and move forward in your life, you have to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. It’s hard when you learn new things and take yourself outside of your comfort zone. When you first start, you will make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes can really hurt, but as you learn from your mistakes, you start to get better. That is when you start to see the growth. They let fear of making mistakes and suffering the pain stop them.

Don’t Let Fear Stop You

Fear of making mistakes and suffering pain stop most people from moving forward to things they want. Working through those mistakes can be painful and this is what keeps people from taking the next step in moving forward to things they want to be able to do.

I’m here to tell you, it is so worth it when you get to the other side. As I mentioned, when we were driving home, I felt this pride coming up for my son. For watching him push through the pain and finish what he started. He was truly outside of his comfort zone, but I know this experience is going to help him grow. While growth and healing does involve getting outside of your comfort zone and can be painful… (This pain can be emotional, spiritual, or even physical) There are many things you can do to help yourself through the pain while you are going through the healing.

Sometimes the physical pain comes from a chronic inflammatory disease and you might find yourself dependent on medication to help with that pain. Realize this… There are many natural supplements out there that can provide you with the same, if not better, relief. Today, I’m going to share with you my experience with the supplement called Boswellia Serrata.

Back to 1999

Going in our time machine to 1999, I was a competitive power lifter. I had just finished second place at the USA Powerlifting Nationals in St. Louis and was getting ready for the second meet. One day when I wasn’t really squatting heavyweights, I got out of form. My knee got a little lax and twisted wrong. I felt this sharp, shearing pain in my right knee and then it went away. I thought it was weird. As I continued to work out that day, the pain kind of came back but it was just there. Like most people, I just ignored it and pushed through the pain.

I still remember driving my truck home after my workout. When I got out of the truck, I had trouble straightening my knee and walking. I was a new physical therapist at that time, only having a couple years of practice and thought I could take care of myself; Everything would be okay. I iced my knee and rested it. It wasn’t okay, the pain got worse. Suddenly, I couldn’t sleep at night because the pain would wake me up. I couldn’t climb stairs, kneel, or squat my own body weight, let alone the 700 plus pounds I was lifting at the time. Finally, I couldn’t do anything more so I got it looked at and eventually had to do surgery.

Articular Cartilage Defect

I found I had what’s called an articular cartilage defect. This occurs when you shear off a piece of the cartilage that coats the end of the bone. Articular cartilage is like the coating on a brand-new frying pan. I had torn a piece of that off my femur. The surgeon had to peel back what was off, trim it out, and drill little holes in my bone to create a blood clot. This was called a microfracture procedure. The blood clot uses the stem cells to create a fibrocartilage patch. It’s not perfect, it’s not the best, but it’s about the best thing you can do short of going out and doing a knee replacement. At the time, I was not a candidate for a knee replacement so we did the microfracture procedure.

I rehabbed my knee to where I could walk and sometimes climb steps but anytime I tried to lift heavier weights, my knee would hurt. Crawling, kneeling, and squatting would hurt. It was like that for years. When my kids were born, I realized I couldn’t crawl on the floor with them. Couldn’t do yard work and there was no way I could run. If you can’t go down steps normally, crawl on the floor with your newborn, or kneel on that side how on earth would you take the impact of running?

I just thought, well, this is the way it’s going to be. I was eating anti-inflammatories; Taking Aleve and ibuprofen without realizing what that was doing to my health.

Fast Forward to 2016

I still couldn’t run, still hurt, my knee would be painful pretty much on a daily basis. A friend of mine told me about this new supplement that was out called Joint Nutra Care. I decided to give it a try and see what happened. I had taken other supplements in the past but I didn’t really get a lot out of them. So, this one I thought eh, I don’t know if it’s really going to help or not. It may be just like all of the others. But then, I started noticing my knees started feeling better slowly over time. Within two to three months, it got better and better. All of a sudden, I didn’t have pain when I was walking. I didn’t have pain when I was going up and downstairs.

I continued to take it and I’m still taking it now. I’ve been taking this stuff for five years now. Last year I finally got to the point where I was like I’m going to try and run. I had lost some weight and gotten healthier. I wanted to see if I could do it. I got out there and I started running. I’ll be honest with you, the last time I ran was I clear back in 1992. Here we are in 2020, and I’m trying to go out and run. I don’t need to tell you I was out of shape, right?

I mean, I was out of shape!

I could run maybe a quarter mile before the burning got so bad in my legs so I had to stop. To make a long story short, I’m going to get to my point here. I continued to work through the conditioning and muscle burning. It was uncomfortable, but guess what? I got better in better shape. I got to where I can now run three miles without knee pain. I should have knee pain. I had an articular cartilage defect and a microfracture procedure in my right knee. The impact loading from the running should make me hurt. It does not.

I know for a fact the reason is the Joint Nutra Care supplement. In the past, I stopped taking them for a while and my knee pain came back. So, I take that natural supplement and it has allowed me to build up to the point where I can run three miles, three times a week. In fact, I ran my first ever 5K-race on the 4th of July! I’ve never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would ever have been able to do that. I can because of the supplements. One of the ingredients to the supplement that has helped me so much is Boswellia Serrata. It’s one of the key ingredients in formula two of Joint Nutra Care.

What is Boswellia Serrata?

It is one of the most ancient and valued herbs in India. Basically, this supplement is made from the gum resin of the Boswellia tree that grows in arid environments such as India, North Africa, and the middle East. It has been used for centuries to treat various chronic inflammatory diseases. We’re not talking hundreds of years, but thousands of years! It’s actually been documented as far back as 700 BC for being used as an anti-inflammatory.

Currently Boswellia Serrata is used to treat arthritis, lower inflammation levels in the body, control blood lipids, decrease atherosclerosis, and relieve pain. It also has the ability to help protect the liver through its suppression of inflammation.

Let’s face the truth here. Most of the drugs people are taking to treat chronic diseases all have harmful side effects. Just listen to the advertisements on TV as they read off the side effects at the end in a very low voice. They only say that because the FDA says they have to. They all have horrible, horrible side effects. Things I know you end up having to take another pill to correct.

For example, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, even over the counter pills such as Aleve and ibuprofen, we all think are safe have harmful side effects. Heck, I thought they were safe back in the day and took them like candy. When I was in the army back in ‘89- ’92, I was a medic and we used to call ibuprofen GI candy. That is what we gave any guy who came to us with an ache or pain. We didn’t know any better. We didn’t have the research.

What We Know Now

NSAID’s increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. It raises blood pressure and can cause gastrointestinal ulcers that bleed to the point where people have died. Just from taking over-the-counter NSAID’s. Not to mention the cox-2 inhibitors, Bextra and Vioxx, which had contributed to the death of thousands of people prior to being pulled from the market by the FDA. Not only that, there was all of these lawsuits with Merck, Pfizer, and many other companies because they hid the truth about what was going on with these medications. They hid the truth for one reason and one reason only… Because they were making a lot of money. They put profit over the good of the general public. That’s been taken care of and they paid the price, but my point is this, there is not a single medication that does not carry with it a side effect.

There are natural products derived from plants that are known as Phyto medicines. These have extraordinary healing capabilities without side effects! right? Given the rise of chronic diseases in the USA, there is a real need for these Phyto medicines. We are trying to get this information out there. That’s why I do what I do; So I can get the information into your hands and you can make the decision for yourself.

Boswellia Serrata

This is one such compound of natural healing capabilities without side effects. It targets many of the pathways that cause inflammation. I don’t want to bore you guys or geek out on you here, but it is a quite complicated process. Basically what it does at the molecular level, is it targets the receptors, enzymes we call a kinases, transcription factors, and growth factors to shut down inflammation. It doesn’t just shut down inflammation! Here’s some something else you didn’t know this did… It reduces the growth of cancer cells. One other pathway is it inhibits the pro-inflammatory enzyme called 5-lox. This Boswellia Serrata actually inhibits that enzyme. Can your Aleve, ibuprofen, and Celebrex do that? I don’t think so.

You see, Boswellia, Serrata acts against inflammatory disorders. It treats things like arthritis, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, and cancer. It acts against metabolic disorders, such as diabetes and atherosclerosis. As I mentioned before, it slows the growth of several cancers; It’s actually been documented to slow the growth of bladder cancer, brain, cervical, colorectal (colon), liver, leukemia, lung, melanoma, meningioma, neuroblastoma, ovarian, pancreatic, and prostate cancer. How amazing is that?

It’s also shown to improve eczema, psoriasis, and viral infections. It does a lot of different stuff!

How Boswellia Serrata Improves Arthritis

As the cartilage wears out in the joint, it results in inflammation of the joint and the surrounding connective tissue. The result is stiffness, swelling, pain, and weakness. All of this will keep you from being able to walk, stand, bend, lift, twist, sleep, or just enjoy life. In studies, Boswellia Serrata decreased this inflammation and the result was less joint pain, stiffness, reduced swelling, and improved physical function in those taking Boswellia Serrata supplements. In fact, there was one clinical trial where they had 30 patients with joint arthritis. They all received 50% of Boswellia Serrata extract at 33 milligrams, three times a day for 90 days.

These patients had a reduction in pain of 90% and an improvement with range of motion on their effected joints by 80%!

Who should be taking Boswellia Serrata? Anyone! I’m telling you right now. Anyone who wants to be healthier without the use of harmful medications that have these nasty side effects. Those who want to improve their lives, want to be more active, and just want to live life to its fullest.

The incidence of chronic inflammatory diseases is on the rise. There’s no question about that. Arthritis, cancers, diabetes, and so many more. The sad truth here is all of these things are preventable. There’re things you can do to keep these from effecting your body. There is clear scientific evidence to support the use of phytochemicals to reduce, and possibly eliminate, chronic inflammatory diseases like arthritis.

That’s why I look at Boswellia Serrata as truly one of nature’s miracles.

Speaking of natural healing…

If you’re experiencing any back or hip pain that is getting in the way of your life, then you really have to check out our back pain breakthrough session. This is a session where you can find out the root cause of your problem. You can get treatment and you can feel better immediately. How awesome is that? We all want to feel better right away, correct? All you have to do is click HERE.

And that’ll be your first step at you taking your life back now.

As always, I’m going to leave you with a thought-provoking quote in the words of Timothy Keller, “Suffering can refine us rather than destroy us because God himself walks with us in the fire.” I’m gonna let you think about that

Until next time. Power Your Life and keep moving forward.

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Mike Uhrlaub

I am a Physical Therapist and CEO/Owner of Flex Physical Therapy.