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Glucosamine has been shown repeatedly to not only help reduce the pain of degenerative arthritis as well as many popular arthritis medications but also to slow or sometimes reverse the degenerative process. 

For example, a study published in the Archives Of Internal Medicine done over a three year period demonstrated that glucosamine supplementation prevented cartilage thinning and joint space narrowing that was seen in the placebo group.  Similar findings were reported in another study published in the highly regarded medical journal Lancet.

But many times I see people who tell me that they have tried glucosamine and it didn’t help at all.  There are of course people who are not helped by glucosamine for one reason or another.  My experience has been that most of the people who tell me glucosamine didn’t help, upon further questioning, did one of two things:  either they bought the absolute cheapest stuff they could find (usually a huge bottle at a discount warehouse store) or they didn’t take it regularly and/or for very long.

 The first issue is quality.  Unfortunately, dietary supplements are not well regulated with regards to whether the purity and potency shown on the label is actually what’s in the bottle.  A high-quality grade of glucosamine costs a little bit to make.  If you find a product that is much cheaper than products that supposedly have the same amount and quality of product, there’s probably a reason - namely that the cheap stuff either has much less glucosamine than the label says, or it’s been so sloppily produced that there’s a good chance it’s contaminated.  Ultra-cheap supplements may seem like a good deal, but if they don’t provide any benefits, you might as well not buy anything at all. 

The second issue is how the supplements were taken and for how long.  Glucosamine is not a pain-killer per se.  It does have some anti-inflammatory effects, but much of the pain-relief glucosamine offers to arthritis sufferers is through it’s effects on rebuilding joint cartilage.  This process takes some time - usually several weeks.  So the impatient person who takes glucosamine for a few days and then gives up because they don’t notice any difference might do quite a bit better if they’ll give it a chance to work.  The second aspect of that is that the supplement needs to be taken on a regular basis.  Taking it twice one day, none the next day, once the day after that, and then none for 3 days after that tends to not get very good results.  Basically, you need to take it every day, preferably dividing your daily itake into two or more doses (for maximum absorption and utilization by the body), and stick with it for several weeks.

By using a good quality glucosamine supplement consistently for several weeks (and then continuing on a maintenance dose thereafter), most people will get good results from using glucosamine.  For recommendations regarding quality glucosamine products, feel free to contact me.

Stay tuned to my blog for more natural arthritis treatment recommendations.

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