Don't post here very often but was looking for a little advice. I'm starting to get to that stage where there's some joint pain in the elbows and knees. I see a lot of adverts for Glucosamine and was just wondering what people's experience of it is? Is it a gimmick? I see it advertised a lot in mainstream media for older people as well.
Other people have mentioned that larger doses of fish oil will also help to 'lubricate' joints and since its significantly cheaper and has other benefits, is it a better option?
Can't cite any articles off the top of my head, but here are two anecdotes:
A) 90% of the older patients I see that have pain problems due to arthritis, joint pain, degenerative discs or other back problems, etc., have been prescribed that - perhaps their docs know something.
B) I have an old dog with severe arthritis in his knees. If he takes glucosamine (and chondroitin), he walks. If we stop the pills, within one week he *cannot* walk. Put him back on the pills, and within a few days he walks again. It's as clear of an effective ABAB research design outcome as I've ever seen personally, though of course having it be an N=1 sample size is slightly problematic ;-) But as in the first anecdote, apparently vets prescribe it routinely for older animals, so perhaps they're seeing some research findings that suggest using it can be effective.
The evidence that does exist for glucosamine is kind of all over the place. In reviews of the literature like this one you see big differences in studies with and without industry support.
In bigger and better studies, the lack of effect is more clear. In the biggest study so far (a multicenter trial published in NEJM), it had no effect except possibly on a group of people with severe OA pain. However since the study wasn't on people with severe OA pain, this may have been a statistical anomaly and not a real result- more research will need to be done. What the study did show is that celecoxib works better anyway.
Personally I'm far from sold. Doctors also prescribe antibiotics for (viral) colds, I think a lot of the time it's about giving the patient something to shut them up, and glucosamine, like anything, will work about 30% of the time.
But, it's still being studied of course.
Here's a good read. I wish I could get the whole study, maybe Ted Bennet can.
The case for chondroitin on the other hand, which is often sold with glucosamine, is much more clear. It just doesn't work- click me
I mean I am as bad as evidence as one can be but I'm a psychology student so I'm really aware of possible placebo effects:)
Anyway... If I'm off the glucosamine for a month or more I tend to get knee pain which then goes away again when I'm on it for a week or two.
A lot of people in this forum and Atama forum have sworn on glucosamine and fish oil:)
I think the problem is there are not many studies which specifically study ppl with high load on joints.
Another thing to consider is that most of the studies that show any effect have doses of 1 gram and up. Most pills you can buy one pill contains 500 mg.