Are Glucosamine Supplements a Good Choice For Back Pain?

Learn about Glucosamine Supplements and see if it's the right choice for you or not.

The jury is in on the effects, or lack thereof, of the use of glucosamine supplements to relieve pain and disability. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says that the use of a glucosamine supplement for chronic pain works as well as sugar pill. Glucosamine is made from healthy cartilage, and is supposed to get rid of pain by restoring cartilage that wears away with age, resulting in osteoarthritis. Knee pain cause by arthritis wasn't really helped with the supplements either for most people.

The study was described as large and long term. The people in the study were given either 1,500 milligrams of glucosamine or a placebo each day for six months. They were then reviewed after six months, and then one year using disability and pain questionnaires. There were not many differences between the two groups, and doctors were advised not to recommend glucosamine to patients that have chronic lower back pain and degenerative lumbar osteoarthritis.

Some patients did receive some benefit from the use of glucosamine, like those that had osteoarthritis of the hip and knee.

Most people don't know much about the dietary supplements they use each day, and a few have been associated with real health problems. For instance, Comfrey tea has been associated with liver disease, and bitter orange, and other herbal weight loss solutions have been known to raise heart rates to sometimes dangerous levels.

It is much better to attain the nutrients your body needs through food as opposed to vitamins and other supplements. Foods that are full of nutrition are also bursting with different forms of vitamins, like carrots, that have many different forms of Vitamin A, so it works better than just taking a Vitamin A supplement does. However, if your diet doesn't cover all of the nutritional basis, it is still a good idea to take a multivitamin each day.

It is wise to stay away from pills that say they can cure anything that plagues you. Echinacea is a great immune booster, but will only shorten cold symptoms for about one to two days, and will not work if taken regularly to try to prevent illness.

If you are simply taking a cheap supplement that doesn't have any real side effects, you will not be losing much. However, costly supplements that have not been proven to work can waste a ton of money. Pills that have greater risks than benefits should be avoided, such as certain herbal weight loss remedies. Some products that pose a greater risk than any benefit they might provide, are things like chaparral, kava, yohimbe, and many others. If the supplement has not been show to provide any real benefits to using it, it is best to stay away from it.

For most people, the use of a glucosamine supplement to ease lower back pain is ineffective, and no longer recommended by physicians for chronic lower back pain.

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