My knee hurts. I’ve heard glucosamine sulphate has helped people with joint problems. However, the pills (and liquid) are really expensive.
What foods contain glucosamine?
You sure you’re not looking at glucosamine-chondroitin pills? Those are pretty expensive, but glucosamine on its own is significantly cheaper.
This is not medical advice, but some pretty compelling studies in the 1980s/1990s (as close to double blind as they could get) showed a moderate by unmistakable benefit in regular consumption of home-made chicken stock. The causative agent for this was never isolated, to the best of my knowledge, but this would be an effective way to extract glucosamine from connective tissues.
In my personal experience, it can have a surprisingly noticeable and immediate effect in some cases. I’ve also noted that periods of worst symptoms often come after this practice is discontinued. [It’s also a great way to improve your home-cooking.] I use the whole chicken (as the studies did) but some people find inexpensive cartilaginous parts, like the wings to be quite effective. A long low simmering (at least 12 hours) is the key. I know people who simply toss cheap chicken parts into a crockpot, bring it to a low boil, then drop the temperature to just below boiling for a total of 24 hours. The xiphoid process (large triangular breastbone cartillage) is my “minimum” test: if it isn’t totally dissolved, the other cartilage in the body won’t be either. Full cartilage hydrolyzation and extraction from bones and internal joints takes longer. When bones are fully extracted, they dry to a bright bleached white and crumble easily between your fingers.
In some places, chicken parts are extremely cheap, while in many grocery chains, chicken wings, and other parts are marked up as “specialty items”. Shop around for sources other than the local grocery stores, if this is a problem. Chicken stock should not be expensive to make. (Using a crock pot will save energy)
I’ve tried homemade turkey, ham and even beef bones, but personally I always come back to chicken, as used in the original study, because the effect is rather subtle after the rapid initial benefit (if any). There are many types of cartilage in the body: I personally find the types of cartillage in joints to be the most efficacious, though the other types (e.g. in skin and bone) may assist.
Chicken stock can be frozen for storage. I don’t know if this affects its potency. I recommend simmering the stock until it is fairly concentrated, then adding ice to rapidly cool it to refrigerator temperatures. Slow cooling of hot stock at room temp or in a refrigerator effectively means hours at “incubation temperatures” that will encourage bacterial spore growth, decrease storage time, and cause some small risk of food poisoning. Also, if you cool hot stock in your refrigerator, you’ll just be heating up your fridge (and everything in it) for hours. This is bad all around.
AFAIK, glucosamine is concentrated in cartilage and nowhere else; I see that KP has already discussed this. While many supplement makers derive chondroitin from green-lipped mussels, I don’t know of any food that’s going to supply glucosamine. I guess boiling chicken joints is a good way to go. While the benefits of oral (as opposed to injected) glucosamine and chondroitin are debatable, they certainly seem to have done wonders for my dog.
I’d like to respond to thi:
While this scenario can happen, a GOOD refrigerator will cool hot stock fast enough without a severe increase in net temperature. If you don’t have a refrigerator that good, though, this advice is ecxellent.
I don’t think there are any foods you can eat to get glucosamine. My personal experience is that taking the pills has seemed to help, although it is hard to know for sure. The best prices I have found is at CostCo wehre I get Glucosamin/Chondoiten 250 tablets for $20.
The health food shop I was in was selling glucosamine that was suitable for vegetarians (It said not extracted from shellfish or other animals).
Making my own chicken stock is a bit beyond my kitchen - isn’t there a plant or something I could eat a lot of instead of buying pills (which were Glucosamine sulphate)??
#1) My doc recommended I take about 2000 mg daily glucosamine for my knees and it has, indeed, apparently helped. He also recommended *against * taking it with chondroitin, however, as the studies on that material were not definitive or compelling enough for his taste. It took about 3 months before I thought I could say for sure that there had been improvement. But there definitely has been. At Walgreen’s, it costs me about $30 for a month’s supply.
#2) A man is hit by a bus and a crowd quickly gathers. One elderly woman says, “Give him chicken soup! Give him chicken soup!” Another bystander says, “Lady, that won’t help.” And she says, “Wouldn’t hurt.”
xo C.
For those of you who have seen improvement with glucosamine, how are you defining improvement. Is there less pain, less stiffness or what?
I just had surgery for a meniscus tear, and the doctor recommended glucosamine. I’m just wondering what I should expect.
Consumer Labs has a report on the source of many Glucosamine supplements.
Basically, it is chicken cartilidge and algae. I also saw a study (sorry can’t find it right now) in which people dried cartilidge in a food dryer, ground it up into a powder, and drank it in orange juice. They showed the same beneficial effects of glucosamine as the people taking capsules.
Freezing your stock does not harm it in any way, alhtough it can pick up some odd flavors if your fail to cover it. Goods Eats chef Alton Brown recommends putting your stock in an ice chest (stocked with ice, of course) to bring it down in to a level quickly enough to inhibit bacterial growth, but also save your fridge the task of cooling it (and wamring your other fridge contents).
Around ym place we have a “stock bag” which we keep in the freezer. When I buy chickens whole and cut it into pieces, I often find myself with some wing tips, the back, plus all of the leftover bones after we are done eating, some with meat still attached. I throw all of this into the stock bag (a gallon zip lock plastic bag), along with onion skins, carrots, and other veggies that have moved past “fresh” and won’t likely get used in the next while. When we are ready for stock, I throw the whole thing into a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer for several hours. The slowcooker is also good if I’m leaving the house. Simple, and frugal.
bnorton - I’m defining improvement by less pain and discomfort when under strain. Getting out of a car was difficult, getting up from squatting was difficult, and my knees ached walking up *and down * the 5 flights of stairs to the racquetball court at the Y. Interestingly enough, they didn’t hurt while playing racquetball. After about three months, I don’t feel any of that pain. I’m calling that improvement. xo C.
Things may be different where you are, but here in Canada I have noticed a wide variation in the prices of glucosamine supplements. The health-food store have outrageously high prices, but I have found that the store brands in supermarkets and chain drugstores are pretty reasonable. I spend about $15 for a 3-month supply.
Hmmm Manduck, remind me to vote for a president that isn’t beholden to the pharmeceutical companies. Again. Next time.
http://www.beyond-a-century.com/hor.html
50g Chondroitin Sulfate Powder $6.75
250g Glucosamine Sulfate Powder $8.25
You only get the powder though you have to cap it yourself.
You’d need a fairly accurate and precise scale if you wanted to make your own capsules or put the appropriate amount in orange juice. Scales are quite expensive and it is vaguely possible that scales and capsules may be considered drug paraphernalia in your area (though I doubt you’d be prosecuted if you were using it for glucosamine). If it’s a once-a-day dose, a scale that can accurately measure 2.0 grams (which would end up being anywhere from 1.9 to 2.1 grams, in reality) wouldn’t be too expensive. But it’s a factor to consider. If you can stand the taste of glucosamine in orange juice, that would be much easier than putting it in capsules. It is possible that the acidity of the drink and the fact that it’s in a suspension or solution rather than a capsule may change the way your body absorbs the glucosamine.
I don’t think pharmaceutical companies are involved in this; glucosamine is considered a nutritional supplement rather than a drug, so the companies that sell it aren’t in that industry.
Yes and no. Capsules hold a certain volume of space, for example size O capsules hold about 1/8th tsp worth of material in them. Since the grams per teaspoon/tablespoon is printed on the label it wouldn’t be hard to determine how many teaspoons/tablespoons you need. You could just measure out a tablespoon and see how many gel caps you can fill that way, then determine how much volume each capsule holds.
A small scale is only about $12. So are 1000 gel caps. So is a capping device.
I realize that this is a joke (and I’ve heard it at medical lectures making various points about alternative medicine), but this being the Stright Dope, I feel obligated to point out that it definitely could hurt -or even kill- him if he needed emergency surgery (We don’t tell people to “no food after midnight” or “avoid liquids before the procedure” out of raw meanness). It could also interfere with the physical exam in the ER, and otherwise be generally undesirable.
With regards to aternative medicine, it’s important to remember that “Anything that has an effect can -and almost certainly will, have side effects,” even if it’s ‘natural’. God didn’t create special harmless cures for human diseases and then hide them on our forests and jungles.
Chicken soup has a long of safety safety record, and is a “common exposure” for many people in normal life anyway, so I’m not seriously suggesting that it has any risks that outweigh its possible benefits (unless you happen to be allergic or something). We all have tio eat something, and its specific therapeutic benefits have been shown. If chicken soup can be bad for you in certain circumstances (and I can think of a few other situations, like fluid overload) then anything can.