Wellness

[wismiss]

My ortho doctor recommends Cosamin ASU. The ASU is short for avocado soybean unsaponifiable which inhibits components that break down cartilage.

[NickNack]

On 1/7/2015 JeanLouiseFinch said:

I listen to Andrew Lessman for pointers about various supplements, but then I find a comparable product on Vitacost. Lessman's are far too expensive. He makes a point about Glucosamin Sulfate being better than Glucosamin HCl and also explains that capsules will dissolve and do their job whereas hard tablets can often pass through a person undigested. All that said, here's what I came up with.

Lessman's Maximum Joint Effort has the addition of very small amounts of Vitamin C, Calcium, and Potassium, but IMO, they're hardly worth acknowledging. The essential parts of his supplement are:
Glucosamine Sulfate 1500 mg
Chondroitin Sulfate 1200 mg
MSM 800 mg

The bottle has individual packets containing 5 capsule packets to make one serving. In the bottle of 300 capsules, they are packaged into 60 packets/servings and cost $89.90 for the bottle.

Vitacost's Glucosamine Chrondroitin & MSM.
Glucosamine Sulfate 1500 mg
Chondroitin Sulfate 1200 mg
MSM 1000 mg

Their large bottle contains 360 loose capsules. The serving size is 4 capsules, which would translate into 90 servings and costs only $36.99.

To me, it's a no brainer. I have the Vitacost Glucosamine & Chondroitin on auto-ship, and that makes it another 10% less. It's the best price around for the exact form of Glucosamine that Dr. Lessman endorses.

I've tried glucosamine chondroitin before, and it didn't help me. I may try Vitacost's with the added MSM and see if it helps.

[VaBelle35]

Eliminating sugar is said to help, but I have to say that I did a Whole30 where you eliminate a whole bunch of stuff including all sugar in all forms in all foods specifically to see if this would help my knee due to inflammation. You basically eat a short list of protein and produce for 30 days.

My knee still hurt, so my issue was not inflammation.

[Tigriss]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I ruled out Lessmans, which I checked first, because it really doesn't contain anything different than what I can get in other forms, even in the same quality with a quality product from vitacost, iherb, or luckvitamin. I did the whole no sugar thing along with no caffine, cold turkey detox, was witchy for 2 weeks, but my eyesight improved and I couldn't tolerate sugar without getting aheadache now, so I still don't do much sugar, but I do love breads, so that is really a sugar. I'll check out the whole 30 as a way to detox and loose weight and try to balance my body. I also do the whole fruit/veg protein smoothie with my Nutribullet/Ninja, but not as frequent as I should, so Whole 30 would be a great way to get into the full habbit of smoothies for breakfast. This morning I did two boiled eggs, plain, so I can alternate those too!

I've got the supplements pulled up and looking into them. THanks for all of the suggestions! I'm off to look into all the choices.

[JeanLouiseFinch]

Just throwing this out there for your consideration, too. If you're trying to reduce your sugar, be careful with replacement sweeteners - especially Equal/aspartame. A few years ago, I was using Equal on everything - in coffee, iced tea, over cereal, on grapefruit. After awhile, my knees started hurting a lot. Getting seated or standing up was also painful. I was pointed to some information that linked the aspartame to the painful joints. Otherwise, I wouldn't have made the connection. I stopped the Equal and went back to real sugar and the pain went away so obviously there's some truth to what I had read. Nowadays we use stevia in our coffee and iced tea.

[Tigriss]

Thanks JeanLouise, but I hate artificial sweeteners, and can somewhat tolerate Stevia. I find diet anything is way too sweet. I can use a sprinkling of stevia and I'm good. The other stuff, if I have to use it, any of it including splenda, is about a quarter of the packet. I can't handle the fake taste of any of it. I also think it causes more problems that sugar, just like fake butter. Use the real thing, but less! I usually have to cut sugar in recipes for sweets by at least a quarter if not half. When I make tea, I use a 3/4c per 2 gallons. If I get tea out, I do a 1/2 and 1/2 or unsweet with a few splashes of sweet. When I went cold turkey, it seriously affected how sweet things registered. Cutting back on the salt has done the same thing. I eat my boiled eggs without it and use very little in the house. I use somewhere around 1 box of kosher salt a year, if that. I'm single, so it really lasts a long time!

[Tigriss]

I looked up the different supplements recommended. I decided to try a liquid for max absorption, Tropical Oasis Joint Camplete (32oz) with Glucosamine, Chondroitin, MSM Hyaluronic Acid, and Vitamin C and Celadrin 1050mg. The liquid has C = 200mg, Glucosamine = 1500mg, chondroitin = 800mg, MSM = 500mg, and Hyaluronic Acid = 50mg. It is $21 and change on amazon with prime. I'll try them for a few months and see how I feel.

Thanks for all the recommendations!

[MalteseMomma]

Joint Juice It combines glucosamine and cranberry juice. Delicious and it works. You get the added benefit of the cranberry for ,you know what !!!

Sometimes I'll slip in a shot of vodka and I have a Cosmo.........lol

[Tigriss]

I wish I could do that as it is around $18 for 30 at Sam's, but I have a fructose absorption problem and can't eat fructose. It was my main source of sweets, fruit!!! So the other is xylitol, which I can hand in small amounts. I did recommend joint juice to several friends that couldn't handle swallowing those large pills. They love it and it was the first thing I really looked at, but then I read the ingredients for forms of fructose. The positive thing is that I don't eat much of other types of sweets, so that has decreased my sugar intake a great deal. Now if I could do away with breads!

[ROMARY]

Just a couple of days ago, a nice Chinese man in our neighborhood mentioned drinking pomegranate juice and/or taking curry capsules. (I believe it was curry.) Anyone here know anything about it?