Does Glucosamine/Chondroitin sulfate actually work?

[KnottedYet]

The prevailing "wisdom" I hear is that if your regular diet is low in the stuff your body needs as raw materials for cartilage repair, the glucosamine chondroitin will help. If you already have adequate raw material in your diet, you may not notice a thing.

What DEFINITELY helps is USE. Use those joints. Study after study is showing that using the joints tells the cells at the weightbearing contact to become cartilage. Even if all you get is a thin layer of slick stuff (like in "bone on bone" knees) that may be enough to keep that joint functional. (you won't get the thick cushy cartilage of a teenager, but you wouldn't with a joint replacement, either. Those are "ceramic on ceramic" or what have you.)

Hence the stories we all know of spry elderly guys who are still running in their 80's and 90's. They aren't supermen and they don't have thick miraculous knee cartilage, the thing is that they never stopped so the body found ways to keep going.

I've got guys whose x-rays look terrible, yet they are running a mile or two every day,rain or shine, and they feel great! They are also mentally sharp.

Eat well, supplement if you feel it helps, and keep moving!

(side note: sometimes joints are truly a mess; painful and non-functional and causing misery. Those joints should be replaced. But if you are 70 years old, walking your dog 5 miles a day, and your knee just gets sore once in a while but doesn't even need a Tylenol, let alone a cane or walker.... please don't replace your knee just because your x-ray is bone-on-bone. Of course it is bone-on-bone! Don't go by the picture, go by the function!)