Glucosamine and Joint Health

Audio Transcript

Coach Jeff: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Runners Connect Run to the Top Extra Kick Podcast. I hope your new year’s resolutions are going well and you’re off to a good start.

Today’s question is from Simon and it’s about glucosamine.

Simon: I’ve been hearing about the benefits of glucosamine all over the place and that it’s supposed to help with joint health. Does this really alleviate joint pain? Thanks in advance.

Jeff: Simon, this is a great question because I think it encompasses a lot of things that I’ve wanted to talk about with supplements for a long time and have plans to write an in-depth article on our website, about the overall topic in general.

To answer your question specifically, glucosamine helps with joint pain but however, it is not a super supplement. There’s bit a lot of study done on glucosamine. It’s something that can have a minor impact or something that can help you a little bit.

Glucosamine can help with preventing further joint breakdown. It prevents your joints from getting worse and that has shown to have a very minor effect.

For some people it won’t really affect it all and for some, it may help reduce that joint degradation a little bit.

It also can help reduce the pain in your joints.

However, it’s been shown to reduce the pain in joints about as much as taking a Tylenol. That covers whether it’s effective or not. It is effective but very minor and may not work for everybody.

The potential side effects of glucosamine are very small. The only one that I could really find was that it could potentially induce flatulence. It may make you a little bit gassy.

Other than that, there’s really no danger in taking up to 2000 to 3000 milligrams of glucosamine daily. If you choose to use glucosamine, there really is no potential downfall.

The only downfall is that you have to remember to take it and it obviously costs you money. There is a potential there that it can help but there really is no downside.

Supplements are not regulated by the F.D.A. So, anything that’s classified as a supplement does not have the same restrictions as something that is regulated by the F.D.A. where the claims have to be proven beyond a doubt, where there has to be research to back up the claims that the supplement is making.

You have to be really careful with supplements because they can really claim to do anything.

Some supplements and some companies are going to claim extreme things and that’s a whole different side of thing that to me is very unethical.

However, you also are going to get supplements and companies that make and produce supplements that are going to overexaggerate the ability of that particular supplement to cause and effect on your body.

Glucosamine mean is one of those where you know you’ll see commercials and you’ll read studies from this companies that sell glucosamine that it’s this wonder supplement.

It’s going to do everything that you’re going to go from not being able to get out of bed in the morning because your joints are so sore, to taking glucosamine and then suddenly, feeling wonderful, being able to play tennis, and run 100 miles a week.

I don’t necessarily mind if supplement companies go off a little bit about what the potential benefits of the drug are, but I don’t mind as much when the when taking that supplement really has no side effect or no downside.

However, there are supplements that taking too much of them or starting to take them can have a potential side effect.

Those are the ones that you want to be careful of and really do a lot more research about what your risk reward is going to be for that supplement.

If you’re looking at supplements, make sure that you understand the actual potential benefits of the supplement and then also the potential side effects or the things that can happen as because of taking that supplement.

The final thing that goes along with that is when we look at supplements, we also need to make sure that we’re looking at the effective dose.

This happens more in the body building world where we know that there are supplements that can potentially like increase your ability to lift or to perform well on the lift.

Let’s say that if the effective maximum dose is like five grams and then you look at a supplement and only have like two grams of that supplement, so one of them is like beta alanine.

For example, we know that the effective minimum dose for beta alanine is about five grams, whereas lot of supplement companies will put like one point two or two grams of beta alanine in there.

It has beta alanine in its advertising that it has it, but it doesn’t have enough effective dose that you are going to get any benefit from. You need to look at the effective dose in any supplement.

In this case with glucosamine, we know that you want to take about 900 to 1500 milligrams per day. Studies did up to 2000 to 3000 milligrams without really any adverse side effects.

If you are going to take glucosamine, just make sure that you look at the amount that’s in the supplement you’re taking , making sure that you’re taking somewhere in the 800 to 1500 milligram range to make sure that you’re getting an effective dose.

I hope that answered your question, specifically about glucosamine and you enjoyed my little side tangent on supplements in general. I did want to read a little bit more in-depth about that and hopefully I will in the future. Simon, thank you so much for your question.

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Thank you so much for everybody for listening I’m hope you have a fantastic run today and we’ll be back tomorrow with another question from our audience.