Glucosamine sulphate - at least 1000 mg a day.

Tiger balm for short-term care.

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

There was a good thread on knee problems recently, it is currently on page 2 - I don't know how to make a link in here, maybe someone else could do it?

It sounds to me that your problem might be similar to those discussed in that thread.

My doctor reckons glucosamine doesn't work for everyone, it works for about 1/3 of people who take it. My problems turned out to be misaligned patella due to weakness of one set of quad muscles and also some quad muscles being too developed compared to my hamstrings, so glucosamine wouldn't have helped anyway.

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Karen

I skate - therefore I am

I just re-read some of the threads, and had forgotten about this one. It is very STRANGE,but those knee pains were BAD and now they are completely gone....wonder what it was.....maybe just too much going on at one time? How bizarre!

Mine come and go too - but I'm never quite sure what causes them to go away. I know they usually come from too much side pressure on the knee - either from a fall, or from rotating the leg too far without rotating the hip. I used to get the problem doing certain Tae Kwon Do kicks, so I stopped doing them.

Tried all your methods last night - ice, heat, glucosamine. And a little walking. Seems to be feeling somewhat better, but still hurts. Not sure if I should skate today.

Internet articles say glucosamine is not FDA tested or approved for anything - so it is like an herbal medicine. That incidentally means its side effects and drug interactions are unknown.

I just consulted a pharmacist about it, who said it is nonetheless quite commonly used, and many people say it has worked. She suggested I try glucoseamine+chondroitin (for cartilage), or ibuprofen for inflammation - but not both, on the general principle that it is safest to take as few types of drugs as you can.

I guess it is pretty important for me to figure out which is my problem, since the theraputic progressive strength and flexibility exercises advocated a for a few days after muscle and ligament injuries might make a cartilage problem worse, like one poster mentioned. Since it is supposed to be very important to get inflammation down as quickly as possible, I will start with ibuprofen, followed by some exercise, and move to the glucoseamine if that fails. If that fails, I guess I need a ATC/PT (certified athletic trainer and/or physical therapist) or sports doctor - but I bet minor pains are hard for them to diagnose, unless I've lost most of my cartilage or something else easy to detect.

The pharmacist said glucoasmine is put in the same pill with chondroitin, also supposed to help cartilage. It is less often put with MSM (Methylsulfonylmethane), and one brand puts it with other things like 5-Loxin (AKBA).

All are over the counter, and she viewed all of them as relatively low risk, at least at the indicated dosage levels.

(Everyone knows excessive doses of ibuprofen are lethal; one doctor told me any medical intern sees a few athletes die of it. I assume the same could be true of the other drugs.)

I hate drugs, but it seems worth a try before going to an expensive ATC/PT or sports doctor.

I do know someone who had knee replacment surgery with poor results. Her ATC/PT said she might have delayed or eliminated the need for surgery with regular physical therapy, involving stretching the joint to reduce the stress on the cartilage, and that is being done on her other knee. Apparently knee replacement surgery is pretty major stuff, and they cut a lot of muscle tissue doing it.

Why can't we just buy new clone bodies?

It is, indeed, a complementary medicine; nevertheless many GPs in this country, including my own cousin, swear by it! Although it apparently only works for about 4 people out of 5, and you need to take enough - at least 1000 mg daily.

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

FWIIW, a person I know with degenerative osteoarthritis (diagnosed by x-ray) was also advised to do exercises - 1 and 2 leg presses on a back board, with progressive intensity.

If you go looking, you find very mixed reviews of whether glucoseamine and Chondroitin work.

A 2006 study funded by NIH found no improvement relative to a placebo. (Government funding matters - most medical studies are funded by groups or companies that have an economic stake in the outcome, and both study techniques and publication probability may be affected.)

And some animal tests showed glucoseamine may complicate diabetes.

Yet, many people have claimed they work for them. (That is true of just about any treatment. If you do something, and something gets better, that doesn't prove the thing you did made it better, but you probably assume it did.)

So how are those of us who are ignorant supposed to make decisions?

Anyway, here are some articles about glucoseamine and Chondroitin:

http://www.quackwatch.com/01Quackery...ucosamine.html

http://www.ubsportsmed.buffalo.edu/e...minepills.html

http://www.consumerreports.org/healt...is-therapy.htm

Chondroitin isn't thought to be effective; what you want is glucosamine sulphate. I have no idea whether it works or not, but I do know that my mother, my father, my husband and myself ALL have far more pain when we don't take them than when we do - and my mother and father are both pretty badly arthritic. They take 2000 mg a day; husband and self, trying to stave off arthritis and degenerating knees, take 1000. And we surely notice when we don't take it!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Following up my own post (sorry!), I have just come across this in December's GI News:

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!