In another post I mentioned my knee pain and a respondent recommended glucosamine. It sounded worth a try, but most brands are very expensive. After searching around a bit I found a bottle of Sun Valley Glucosamine Sulfate 1000mg for ~$12.00; affordable. However now that I’ve checked the back label more carefully it says “Glucosamine Sulfate Potassium Chloride 1000 mg”. IOW, are the tablets mostly salt with vanishingly little actual glucosamine? Does anyone know where I could look up the glucosamine content?
Maybe I could market Gold Ingots with the small print saying “Contains: gold dirt gravel 1 kilogram”.
First of all, most supplements are either wholly unregulated or only regulated in the sense that they can’t contain controlled substances or known toxins. So yes, you could market Glucosamine Tablets that contained no more than a sprinkle of gluc. I’m not even sure you would have to disclose that in the labeling as long as you met the ingredients listing requirement.
Second, there are two kinds of Glucosamine, one that is ‘dietarily useful’ and one that is not (and essentially passes right through to Mr. Toidy.) Guess which one is more expensive.
Third… well, if you think it helps, I won’t argue, but the tide is running against the usefulness of glucosamine and chondritin for human joint issues. Oddly enough, it does seem to work for dogs.
I’m a pretty vigorous scientist and am an unapologetic skeptic on many things including supplements.
My purely anecdotal experience is that taking Glucosamine chondroitin is positively correlated with my wrist pain being eased. I’ve had two doctors and one pharmacist specifically tell me (when I asked if it was bunk) that it does indeed seem to work. I know of another pretty serious scientist who concurs.
I’m willing to have my mind changed when presented new information, but this is currently the only supplement that I do believe has some positive affect.
OP, I think the cheapie supplement you found is very worthy of your concerns about the actual content of the desired ingredient, as reflected in the much lower price. Like Sigene, I have wrist problems (not carpal tunnel issues – it’s compression damage to the cartilage) and the painful grindy-clicking and overall achiness both seem to dissipate when I’m good about taking gluc/chondr. supplements that aren’t sold at bottom-barrel prices.
Maybe it’s a placebo effect in my case, but since it works for me – literally works, as in my perception of pain is diminished, no matter what the mechanism – I’ll go on taking them.
In the spirit of lots of anecdotes makes lots of datas (this is irony), I have a subject with a similar experience that’s immune to placebo effects: my dog. Upon the recommendation of our vet, I started giving her (the dog, not the vet) glucosamine supplements for her joint symptoms, and they seems to improve her willingness and ability to move significantly. I suppose one could argue that the placebo affected my perception of her, though. :smack:
I once used glucosamine supplements for my aching knees. They did improve considerably. But only to a point and after that the glucosamine didn’t do anything anymore. Never mind, the pain stayed gone even when I stopped taking the supplements.
I just wish you hadn’t prefaced your remarks with the equivalent of I’m-a-skeptic-but (familiar from too many ads).*
I’ve tried a glucosamine-chondroitin supplement without demonstrable effect, and saw the same outcome with our arthritic Labrador (who improved markedly on an NSAID). Some people report positive effects - but you also have to consider that arthritic conditions often go through good and bad spells by natural history. If you take a pill during a bad stretch, symptoms often will ease for a time on their own and the pill wrongly gets credit.
No big problem with trying it though (except for expense). If possible I’d look for an independent report on content, seeing as how supplements often vary markedly as to whether what’s printed on the label matches what’s actually in the pill/capsule.
*my favorite is the young woman on TV who reported being skeptical about psychic hotlines, but the Hollywood Psychics Hotline (or whatever the hell they call it) was the Real Deal.
I think the effectiveness is a side issue for this question. Given that there are two tiers of pricing, one uniformly pretty high and one suspiciously low, I’d bet strongly that the low-cost stuff is either weakly compounded or uses cheaper forms of the supplement that are not as dietarily available, limiting whatever good the stuff might do.
If you think the stuff works, buy the stuff that has the highest chance of actually working. To buy cheap stuff that almost certainly can’t do anything because your body can’t use it is just acknowledging it’s useless or a placebo effect.
Glucosamine as a supplement makes no sense to me. Once you digest it the glucosamine is gone. It is in almost everything we eat. The body has to manufacture it at the sight.
Many supplements come in a form that is not the pure active ingredient. For example, two forms of magnesium supplements are magnesium oxide and magnesium aspartate which are both fine to raise magnesium levels in the body. You just need to compare the supplement facts label to make a valid comparison between different brands. Note that different formulations may have different levels of bioavailability and/or intended uses, so do a bit of Googling.
I’m a pharmacist, and it does seem to work for some people. Even if it doesn’t, it’s harmless (except maybe to one’s bank account) but the only way to find out is to try it.
Examine.com has tons of info on glucosamine. They rate the level of evidence that it helps for pain and symptoms of osteoarthritis grade A (robust research conducted with repeated double blind clinical trials), although the effect size is small: