15 ms·

Glucosamine Supplementation Reduces All-Cause Mortality: Study

279 points by mrfusion 6y ago

shawncampbell 6y ago
> This population-based prospective cohort study included 495 077 women and men (mean (SD) age, 56.6 (8.1) years) from the UK Biobank study. Participants were recruited from 2006 to 2010 and were followed up through 2018. We evaluated all-cause mortality and mortality due to cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, respiratory and digestive disease. HRs and 95% CIs for all-cause and cause-specific mortality were calculated using Cox proportional hazards models with adjustment for potential confounding variables. > Regular glucosamine supplementation was associated with lower mortality due to all causes, cancer, CVD, respiratory and digestive diseases.
- throw1234651234 6y ago
  I am guessing they didn't control for lifestyle, etc. Someone who takes glucosamine either works out heavily and supplements (and probably watches their diet), or had joint surgery, and falls into the first group to some degree. Edit: Yea, reading the study, I don't see anything about controlling for fitness level. Running and caring about one's diet alone would account for this effect without glucosamine.
  - nradov 6y ago
    So it's just another crappy observational study, which is about all we ever get on human nutrition. This is low quality on the evidence-based medicine scale.
  - fluidcruft 6y ago
    > Yea, reading the study, I don't see anything about controlling for fitness level. Doesn't table 2 and 3 show that they examined a bunch of relevant covariates including physical activity, smoking, alcohol use, diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, statin and aspirin use? It's at least "something" at the very least and I'm not sure how you missed it if you were actually reading the study because it's very hard to miss.
    - throw1234651234 6y ago
      "because it's very hard to miss". Haha rub it in, fair enough.
  - brownbat 6y ago
    > Edit: Yea, reading the study, I don't see anything about controlling for fitness level. They specifically control for the following lifestyle factors: "smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and vegetable and fruit consumption." (Ctrl+f for "covariates") In the conclusion, they acknowledge: "Although we had carefully adjusted for potential confounding lifestyle-related factors in our analyses, we could not exclude the possibility that the results were confounded by unmeasured lifestyle-related factors." But if someone "works out heavily and supplements," that should show up in self reported physical activity, and indirectly in BMI.
    - throw1234651234 6y ago
      I missed that. Thanks a lot for the correction.
    - polynomial 6y ago
      I don't see "other supplements" in that list; surely they had to control for that as well?
    - madacol 6y ago
      Awesome!, thanks for the tip `(Ctrl+f for "covariates")`
    - NickM 6y ago
      But if someone "works out heavily and supplements," that should show up in self reported physical activity, and indirectly in BMI. Well, not to nitpick, but people with high muscle mass can easily end up with an "obese" BMI even if they have very low body fat. And it also doesn't take very many hours of working out per week to get jacked if you're doing heavy weightlifting and supplementing. No idea if such people are common enough to skew the results of this study significantly, but it still makes me wonder a bit.
      - ska 6y ago
        Sure, some (not a huge fraction, I'm guessing single digit percentage) of very physically active people are poorly modeled by BMI but it shouldn't matter if they are explictly handling these covariates. It's more an issue if there is something they haven't accounted for, as they point out.
- deleted 6y ago
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andrewem 6y ago
The paper this is based on, which might be a better link: https://ard.bmj.com/content/79/6/829 https://ard.bmj.com/content/79/6/829
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- faitswulff 6y ago
  The study says the participants were 62% female, overwhelmingly ate more vegetables and supplements, exercised more than the control group, were mostly white, as well as self reported glucosamine supplementation - without dosage information. Overall it might be more indicative of wealth, education, and fitness than the effect of glucosamine. The paper itself says it’s not able to differentiate the effect from lifestyle changes: > Third, regular glucosamine use may be a marker for a healthy lifestyle, but it is hard to distinguish the confounding effects of a healthy lifestyle from the impact of regular supplementations in an observational study. Although we had carefully adjusted for potential confounding lifestyle-related factors in our analyses, we could not exclude the possibility that the results were confounded by unmeasured lifestyle-related factors. In general, with the current observational study design the possibility of residual confounding due to imprecise measurements or unknown factors cannot be excluded for all findings in our study, despite our careful adjustment of all measured confounders.
  - chromatin 6y ago
    The confounders are, as you point out, incredible.
  - m0llusk 6y ago
    That is possible but the large sample size may help. The study involved roughly a half million people with around one hundred thousand supplementing with glucosamine. With that many people and these big numbers the results are rather strong.
    - dahinds 6y ago
bigpumpkin 6y ago
are there dietary sources of glucosamine?
- throw1234651234 6y ago
  Yes - cartilage. If you eat chicken or something like that, eat the cartilage. You can do this on pre-cooked chickens you get from Sam's Club / Costco. If you eat chicken breasts only (which a lot of health-conscious people do), you don't get this benefit. I talked to Dr.Yang Jwing Ming (one of the few Kung Fu practioners with a Western phd and he said eating cartilage is one of the best ways to help reduce the risk of arthritis. Oh, and pig ears too, but I never tried that, being a Westerner and all.
  - mrfusion 6y ago
    Would chicken bone broth have it?
    - Malic 6y ago
      Quite probably. I am assuming that home-made methods are similar as industrial scale methods (put a bunch of chicken bones and connective tissue in a vat of water, simmer, strain).
    - ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
      No, it's a myth: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/10/384948585/taking-stock-of-bone-broth-sorry-no-cure-all-here https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/10/384948585/ta... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5533136/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5533136/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/11/truth-about-bone-broth/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/11/truth-about-...
      - mrfusion 6y ago
        None of those mention Glucosamine. And they seem to be sour grapes articles, not sure why. One of the “myths” they dispel is “bone broth tastes good”. It does raise some good thoughts on why it’s not a super food.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
This title is not the title of the study. "Associations of regular glucosamine use with all-cause and cause-specific mortality: a large prospective cohort study" This does not mean it reduces all cause mortality. This is correlation, not causation. To take this further, there might be no limit to what you could correlate to some degree with all-cause mortality, especially since it might be heavily correlated to financial status, which would correlate to an enormous amount of other behaviors (eating avocados, owning a swimming pool, having a high ceiling, having your own bathroom, having a gym membership, organic food, name brand laundry soap, not taking public transportation, better healthy insurance, smoking habits, coffee quality, living in a low crime area, etc etc). Determining cause and effect takes a lot of control variables.
- bernie_simon 6y ago
  "The UK Biobank used a baseline touch screen questionnaire to assess several potential confounders: sociodemographic characteristics (age, sex, ethnicity, Townsend Deprivation Index, education and average total annual household income), lifestyle behaviours (smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and vegetable and fruit consumption), health conditions (CVD (myocardial infarction, angina or stroke), respiratory disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema), cancer, digestive disease (liver failure, cirrhosis or alcoholic liver disease), dementia, depression, longstanding illness, hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol), drug use (chondroitin, aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use), vitamin supplementation (vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, multivitamin and folic acid) and mineral and other dietary supplementation (calcium, iron, zinc, selenium and fish oil)). "
  - richdougherty 6y ago
    Still, the authors accept correlation as a potential objection, despite doing their best to control for it. I suppose they need a randomised controlled study or something to be more certain. "Third, regular glucosamine use may be a marker for a healthy lifestyle, but it is hard to distinguish the confounding effects of a healthy lifestyle from the impact of regular supplementations in an observational study. Although we had carefully adjusted for potential confounding lifestyle-related factors in our analyses, we could not exclude the possibility that the results were confounded by unmeasured lifestyle-related factors. In general, with the current observational study design the possibility of residual confounding due to imprecise measurements or unknown factors cannot be excluded for all findings in our study, despite our careful adjustment of all measured confounders."
ryanmarsh 6y ago
People who take glucosamine often do so BECAUSE of their active lifestyle, most don't have a use for it otherwise. This study did not control for lifestyle. In other news, people who own Peloton shoes likely to live longer...
- madacol 6y ago
  > Covariates > The UK Biobank used a baseline touch screen questionnaire to assess several potential confounders: ..., lifestyle behaviours (smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and vegetable and fruit consumption), You seem to not have read other comments, where the same complaint is made, and its answers.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
What dosage is recommended?
- gniv 6y ago
  This other study suggests 2000mg per day: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/37/1/45.short https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/37/1/45.short
ve55 6y ago
I've been supplementing glucosamine along with a large amount of other things for awhile now. I'm not too bullish on it in humans, but it doesn't seem like it hurts, and is definitely cheap: https://nearcyan.com/supplements https://nearcyan.com/supplements My latest favorites that I'm a bit more hopeful for are glycine, spermadine, and rapamycin.
- basch 6y ago
  Do you take each Vitamin individually, or do you take a multivitamin? Do you make an effort to get large doses of these things from food first?
  - ve55 6y ago
    Individually. Sometimes a few things are combined when a good option is available, but generally multivitamins don't give me what I want in the doses that I want. Since I tested all of my blood metrics beforehand, it's unlikely the market would have a 'perfect' vitamin for me. Especially since most of what I like to take isn't technically a vitamin. My diet is currently pretty un-optimized, so although I would prefer to consume a lot of things via diet, it's not guaranteed at all. But the extra bio-availability and such is likely nice
    - basch 6y ago
      Id be curious what it would look like if you tested your blood now, stopped taking them all, and radically modified your died, what kind of results you would get in a couple weeks. Daily intake of, tomato juice, kefir, sardines, salmon, spinach, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, pistachio, eggs. You could probably get a whole days worth of food into a snack, a salad, and a soup.
      - ve55 6y ago
        I wish it was easier to do intensive tracking of everything like that, but it's definitely a lot of work. Some supplements I have very clear before+after results, with the only probable cause being the supplement (e.g. vitamin D or magnesium), but a lot of others are hard to test, control for, find biomarkers for, etc. I do know there are a few people in the area that log literally every substance they eat in terms of grams, and then correlate it with all of their blood metrics, and use that to try to optimize each blood metric for what correlates with the lowest mortality rate. It's interesting, but this stuff is unfortunately a lot of work for average people to attempt. Here's a great example: https://twitter.com/Nearcyan/status/1282042301980835842 https://twitter.com/Nearcyan/status/1282042301980835842
nikolay 6y ago
I've been a big fan of N-Acetyl Glucosamine (aka NAG), which is one of the most underlooked safe supplement to deal with autoimmune disease. Could it be the same as the mobility supplements with Glucosamine?
m0zg 6y ago
To people who put too much stock in these "studies", consider this: as of July 2020 we _still_ have no conclusive answer if _eggs_ are good for you or not. What makes you believe this is any different?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  We're still waiting for them to figure out salt.
- fragmede 6y ago
  Why would eggs, for which there isn't a chemical formula, nor a standard preparation, be easier to study? What even does "good for you" mean? Don't get confused between mass-media popular "science" and things science can actually do - like measure whether a dozen eggs a day will raise your LDL and HDL (cholesterol) and cause heart disease - and drawing wild conclusions (especially right now) from pre-print articles that are used to sell magazine articles to use as justification to eat chocolate and drink wine under the guise of "it's good for you".
amasad 6y ago
I wonder if you get enough of it on a highly carnivorous diet -- bone broth, bone marrow etc.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  I doubt it as many people mention it has great benefit on dogs, and their diet is pretty much all that.
matsemann 6y ago
https://examine.com/supplements/glucosamine/ https://examine.com/supplements/glucosamine/ Always used this site when trying to find unbiased information, and also not be to hyped about a single study. However now the effect matrix is hidden behind a paywall. When talking about joint health: As a young and very active person my biggest problem is overtraining injuries. Wish I knew how to be able to train as much as I would like to, with just a simple supplement or so...
- adrr 6y ago
  There's always peptides that do work with mouse models but there aren't any decent safety studies on them with humans. I really wish there was a push to get safety and efficacy studies around BPC-157 and other peptides.
- pkid 6y ago
  Look up Keith Baar. He has some suggestions.
nazca 6y ago
I've given glucosamine to my dogs for years, and I can clearly notice a difference in their joint health and how stiff and sore they are after long runs ('long-run': 15-25 miles, measured on GPS collars). When I run out of glucosamine, or just drop off of giving it to them for whatever reason, I see them fall back pretty quickly. And when I restart them on it, I notice a response in a few days. I also give give them fish oil pills, but I've never been able to notice a difference.
- GloriousKoji 6y ago
  Purely anecdotal data but a I know a good number of dogs and cats that had really good results supplementing with glucosamine. As for me personally and few other friends and family, glucosamine supplements didn't have much of a noticeable effect.
  - xvilka 6y ago
    Probably because we, humans, don't move as much as cats and dogs.
- coredog64 6y ago
  Fish oil is more of a natural anti-inflammatory than a fix for the problem.
- hlfy_hn 6y ago
  Would you be so kind to tell me 1. The amount and frequency of glucosamine you give to your dog 2. The size of your dog (kg/pound)
  - nazca 6y ago
    I give 500mg per day. My two dogs are 55 and 65 lbs. The amazon product number I use is: B00V45IQF6. They have dosage info on the label for different sized dogs.
- mkl 6y ago
  This matches glucosamine's effect on me pretty well. I have a genetic joint condition that makes any repetitive motion cause damage and pain. Glucosamine (4500mg/day) is provably the one thing that lets me have a normal career (carefully chosen job still). If I stop taking it for a few days, that's a problem. I stepped up to that dosage, noticing clear improvements a week or so after each increase. I couldn't run 15 miles though! Walking 1km is risky even on a good day, even with glucosamine.
Abaqus49 6y ago
I was suffering from severe knee pain due to cartilage wear and started taking liquid Glucosamine supplement as per doctor advice since 4 years. Now I'm perfectly OK and run daily.
Fezzik 6y ago
Like others, I give my dogs glucosamine and it seems to have clear health benefits, but I have tried numerous dosages for myself and when I consume any meaningful amount it gives me absolutely wretched headaches about a day or two after consumption. Something to be aware if you start taking glucosamine and get headaches, it’s probably the glucosamine.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Perhaps you have some undiagnosed shellfish allergy? FWIW, I've noticed iHerb has started selling shellfish-free glucosamine.
  - Fezzik 6y ago
    I had that thought but have never formally tested it. I do eat an above-average amount of crab, clams, scallops, shrimp (tail on), etc... and I always feel great afterwards. Obviously a glucosamine tablet is far more concentrated, so I could very well be allergic. I’ll definitely checkout that brand though!
evo_9 6y ago
If you are interested in digging into this stuff, and what really works medically/scientifically based on reviewed evidence and sources such as Cochrane Reviews, I can't recommend Dr Stanfields youtube channel high enough: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBradStanfield/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBradStanfield/videos Also here is his video on Sulforaphane which Glucosamine activates. He goes into detail as to how this mechanism works. Because of his video/latest research presented I changed to taking Broccomax because you need Myrosinase to actvite the SGS for it's full effect, he goes into detail on this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAb1eQbRAe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAb1eQbRAe0 Cochrane Review he uses as his primary source: https://www.cochrane.org/CD007176/LIVER_antioxidant-supplements-for-prevention-of-mortality-in-healthy-participants-and-patients-with-various-diseases https://www.cochrane.org/CD007176/LIVER_antioxidant-suppleme...
- hkt 6y ago
  Is a Cochrane review really a primary source? They're meta-analysis, which I'd think of as secondary. In the case linked, the analysis seems pretty unequivocally to not support supplementing: "We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention. Beta-carotene and vitamin E seem to increase mortality, and so may higher doses of vitamin A. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered as medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing." Did I miss something?
  - DiabloD3 6y ago
    Vitamin E research also ends up being a bit YMMV: most commercially available Vitamin E is one form only, alpha tocopherol... except Vit E is 8 different forms: 4 tocopherols and 4 tocotrienols. The research that has been done so far basically indicates alpha tocopherol-only supplementation aligns identically with unspecified-Vitamin-E-is-bad research.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    The op talks about sulforaphane but then links to an article about vitamin a and e(I don't know why) They're totally different chemicals that work through completely different pathways. And a study on vitamin a and e etc doesn't tell you much about other supplements. Just like how a study on does whether or not statins are associated with reduced mortality tells you little about whether or not ACE inhibitors are associated with reduced mortality. Also I don't think op meant primary source as in primary vs secondary sources but meant in the sense of "this doctor primarily uses Cochrane as his source for information"
GekkePrutser 6y ago
I do indeed note that my minor (RSI related) joint issues almost immediately disappear when I take that stuff. It seems indeed quite beneficial.
- gootdude 6y ago
  What dosage do you take and how long does the pain relief last?
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    I take Glucosamine / Chondroitine Complex 500/100mg. One or 2 per day. It's hard to say how long, it does take a day or 2 to kick in (when I said "immediately" I meant within a couple days when I start taking it. I probably shouldn't have used that term.) I'm not very strict with medication so I tend to stop it when I don't have issues. But especially in my elbows where I only have mild pain it seems to help a lot. In my wrists it doesn't as much, but I think the pain there is not totally joint-related.
- JackMorgan 6y ago
  Indeed, I'm also having RSI issues and would like to know
oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
It's interesting to see that even on HN people don't know the difference between correlation and causation.
- hkt 6y ago
  I'd guess there's not much cause for it among computer science people. I've noticed this in the past: empirical disciplines are better at this stuff. Still, I can't quite work out if a biology degree would cause somebody to understand it better..
  - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
    In my experience, most empirical majors beat you over the head with the chanting of "correlation does not imply causation" pretty much every term. It's too bad that it's one of those things that's not naturally intuitive to people.
  - notafraudster 6y ago
    I mean one of the two dominant frameworks for causal inference is Judea Pearl's directed acyclic graphs / do-calculus, and Pearl is surely a computer scientist.
- Dayshine 6y ago
  Have you read the paper? They adjust for damn near everything including reverse causation. What confounders do you believe the UK biobank data can't account for?
  - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
    It doesn't matter if you eliminate 10 million confounds. No matter how good your correlation study is, it cannot establish a causation. To do that you need random assignment at the very least.
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      ... and even that gives you the wrong answer if your diagnostic specificity is faulty. This last is why we keep seeing muddled reports that "antidepressants don't work". Diagnosis of "depression" is a snakepit; the only known way to discern which among at least six conditions you might have, all labeled "depression", is to see what medications work, if any. Imagine trying to conduct a plausible RCT for that. "Gold standard"? Ha.
shadykiller 6y ago
Quote: "Glucosamine is a polysaccharide that is found naturally in cartilaginous joint tissues, bones, skin, ligaments, and nails" Why not just eat natural sources like cartilage, bone broth, skin etc ?
- bitxbit 6y ago
  This so much. Absorption rate could vary quite a bit and it’s nearly impossible to research and find a good source these days due to insane number of supplement manufacturers in the market (I partly blame Amazon for this).
- mkl 6y ago
  Glucosamine tablets are made from natural sources, usually seafood (e.g. shells of shrimp, lobsters, and crabs).
  - hinkley 6y ago
    I’ve heard that in japan (or at least parts of it) they eat shrimp whole, and it’s kind of amusing when visitors bite off the tails. Also the little “bones” from certain fish I expect do the same.
    - ranma42 6y ago
      There's even snacks that are just the fried fish bones. http://seriouseats.com/2011/03/the-nasty-bits-fried-fish-bones.html http://seriouseats.com/2011/03/the-nasty-bits-fried-fish-bon...
- jiofih 6y ago
  Interestingly most sources I could find on the web say categorically that “No natural food sources of glucosamine exist”, while the the supplement is made from sea shells. All resources related to canine health on the other hand mention cartilage, bone marrow and beef trachea as rich in glucosamine... someone is being dishonest there.
  - 6y ago
viburnum 6y ago
I wonder if humans used to eat more bones ... I had a physical anthropology professor who studied an ancient site in east Africa where it appeared humans got a fair amount of food from eating leftovers from lions and whatnot, breaking open bones and eating marrow. Basically humans were in between the predators and the vultures.
- jdhawk 6y ago
  Yes, and even more recently, the stew pot extracted a lot more than the boneless chicken breast of today.
bhopballooo 6y ago
Is it a simple case of pain-free joints enabling one to exercise more?
- autisticcurio 6y ago
  Every time you move, the body releases adrenaline, so you are not far wrong in your line of thought. The adrenal glands produces around 180 different hormones including adrenaline, so protecting or even attempting to improve their function would be a logical natural pain killing route to take. Hint they are layer upon layer of epithelial cells. Of course other factors like the body attacking itself is also a problem which the adrenal glands alone cant "fix", for example too much sodium increases the Th17 cells to the point they start attacking the body. T cells from Thymus, B cells from bone marrow. However considering civilisations & Religions have existed for over 10,000years dating back to Sumerian times, observation was the only "scientific" methods available at the time, and Religions had to keep their followers healthy for the next attack, so looking into different religious fasting methods could also improve health outcomes. The world record for a water only fast, still in the Guinness book of world records is 382days, carried out in 1971 at the University of Dundee. Having done an 18day water only fast myself and felt like a teenager again, I'd highly recommend investigating it to others. A US movement in the 1950's called the Hygienists and Shelton were big advocates. Also consider the immune system attacks the food we eat, so as our immune cell count falls during a fast, are there still more immune cells now working solely removing damaged cells from the body? Its suggested viruses need carbs as noted by the use of the Keto BCAA Lysine for Cold Sores, bacteria builds biofilms when they go dormant in the body but are not impenetrable to the attacking immune system either. So there seems to be some merit with a water only fast for some, however sudden death is a risk to those with undiagnosed conditions, a bit like we see with some seemingly healthy people dying of covid. Either way, the human body, in fact any lifeform is an extremely complex biochemical and electrical real time puzzle where many chemicals play their part in lengthening life spans or shortening life spans. I wouldnt bet my life on just one supplement, unlike Linus Pauling and Vit C, its effects like all supplements, need to be put in context in the scheme of things keeping us alive, healthy and happy.
ibobev 6y ago
All-Cause Mortality? Is it make you also somehow immune to fire arms for example? Just the title makes the article to view unserious.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  Statistically perhaps? I.e. there surely are chemicals and infections which make you more, hmmm, adventurous. Perhaps it might make you more careful and less likely to get shot.
- jdhn 6y ago
  >Is it make you also somehow immune to fire arms for example? No, you have to start off with daily injections of small arms fires (think .22 caliber) in order to begin building immunity. Over time you gain immunity and then can work your way up to larger calibers.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    Reminiscent of the biological testing approach here: https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
  - tomcam 6y ago
    That was one of the low key funniest things I’ve ever read on hacking news
    - tomcam 6y ago
      Hacker News. I’m an idiot. But I stand by the rest!
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    It is a Reddit worthy response, but it immediately made me think of a KungFu movie I saw in the 80s where the monks were trained to withstand gunshots (multiple) to their heart. Now I just cannot find what (incredibly bad but apparently memorable) movie that was!
- 6y ago
lgats 6y ago
Regular glucosamine supplementation was associated with lower mortality due to all causes, cancer, CVD, respiratory and digestive diseases. associated, not direct causation
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lettergram 6y ago
Probably because those who are old start moving again with lower joint pain. My 80 year old grandfather is the most fit person I know. Super healthy, but literally lifts rocks and gardens every day. To contrast other family members are in their 50s with diabetes and heart conditions. Keeping active is key. Remove peoples joint pain (which is what this supplement is used for) and of course they reduce mortal across the board.
- tomcam 6y ago
  Props to your grandfather. I can barely lift even a small garden.
  - jagannathtech 6y ago
    lol
llama9000 6y ago
The bit questioning its usefulness in addressing arthritis is pretty much bullshit, as it's working for my parents and even my cat - Who went from dragging himself around to going all jumpy within DAYS of having it mixed in with the food. Glucosamine + Chondrotin + MSM - This supplement combination is ideal.
- daodedickinson 6y ago
  Yes, we started giving Glycoflex to our dogs every day going back decades.
- MMTP 6y ago
  The evidence for Glucosamine alone to do much about arthritis is poor. Glucosamine + Chondrotin + MSM is a different matter entirely and is not the same as what the author is speaking about.
hirenj 6y ago
I wonder why we need to supplement glucosamine (e.g. to treat arthritis) when it is synthesised by the body from glucose in one of our basic metabolic pathways. I could only imagine this becomes a problem unless a) the enzymes responsible stop working or b) if the glucose gets shunted off to some other purpose. It’s also funny that chondroitin supplementation does the job too, because it actually contains no glucosamine, but contains monosaccharides that are derived from glucosamine (N-acetyl Galactosamine). I think there’s probably a very interesting answer to these metabolic questions that could shed a lot of light onto the phenotypes of aging. That said, I don’t know what evidence is out there for systemic lack of e.g. glycosaminoglycans in aged populations, or even in arthritic cohorts.
- hhas01 6y ago
  In absence of good, hard, scientific evidence of effects above and beyond placebo, I’m gonna go with “Cos it’s easy to bottle and it’s easy to sell”. And profitable too, I have no doubt. Thanks to Orrin Hatch, US supplement peddlers don’t even have to prove their products are safe, never mind effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_Education_Act_of_1994 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_... I bet the oft-reviled Big Pharma (who, amusingly enough, are some of the biggest manufactures of supplements too) just wish all their products could enjoy such lax standards of regulation. Meanwhile, to everyone else, I wholeheartedly recommend The Poison Squad: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-squad/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-squ... https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-poison-squad-by-deborah-blum/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-poison-s...
hhas01 6y ago
Article title is gross overreach, if not outright wrong. IANAS, but even I know Correlation does not mean Causation. The paper itself only says “associated with”, not “responsible for”. Being an observational study of self-selecting cohorts, even with the authors’ attempts to control the confounders will be massive. Honestly, this is the standard of reporting I’d expect from yellow-bellied fish wrappers like the Daily Mail. Please do better.
hrishios 6y ago
This is an impossible field to be working in - I know - and it's to do with the way our medical research and treatment systems are set up. We began as a species focused on making sick people healthy, and it's the way the entire system works. It's near impossible to get studies approved that tackle aging and proactive healthcare with drugs, as they will largely need to look at the effects on people who are healthy now, but will almost assuredly die from dementia, Alzheimer's and heart disease. I understand why it is the way it is, but it's frustrating to see the system wait until you have heart disease in your 70s before doing something about it.
- hhas01 6y ago
  You do realize the reason people now die of dementia is because medical science and improved standards of living have largely eliminated all the things that used to kill them before they got old enough to develop it? The same goes for cancers. As for heart disease, that’s largely a product of lifestyle choices: smoking, obesity, inactivity. And doctors already tell their patients to eat healthily and exercise daily, but who wants to hear that when they’re young enough not to feel the consequences, or old enough not to want to change their ways now? Hence the eternal market for easy, quick magical pills and their silver-tongued salesmen that promise to cure it all. We began as a species programmed to spot the difference between a zebra and lion on the plains of the Serengeti, and we’ve barely evolved since—if anything, we’re even easier to hack now. Just ask the vampires.

279 points by mrfusion 6y ago

> This population-based prospective cohort study included 495 077 women and men (mean (SD) age, 56.6 (8.1) years) from the UK Biobank study. Participants were recruited from 2006 to 2010 and were followed up through 2018. We evaluated all-cause mortality and mortality due to cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, respiratory and digestive disease. HRs and 95% CIs for all-cause and cause-specific mortality were calculated using Cox proportional hazards models with adjustment for potential confounding variables. > Regular glucosamine supplementation was associated with lower mortality due to all causes, cancer, CVD, respiratory and digestive diseases.

throw1234651234 6y ago
I am guessing they didn't control for lifestyle, etc. Someone who takes glucosamine either works out heavily and supplements (and probably watches their diet), or had joint surgery, and falls into the first group to some degree. Edit: Yea, reading the study, I don't see anything about controlling for fitness level. Running and caring about one's diet alone would account for this effect without glucosamine.
- nradov 6y ago
  So it's just another crappy observational study, which is about all we ever get on human nutrition. This is low quality on the evidence-based medicine scale.
- fluidcruft 6y ago
  > Yea, reading the study, I don't see anything about controlling for fitness level. Doesn't table 2 and 3 show that they examined a bunch of relevant covariates including physical activity, smoking, alcohol use, diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, statin and aspirin use? It's at least "something" at the very least and I'm not sure how you missed it if you were actually reading the study because it's very hard to miss.
  - throw1234651234 6y ago
    "because it's very hard to miss". Haha rub it in, fair enough.
- brownbat 6y ago
  > Edit: Yea, reading the study, I don't see anything about controlling for fitness level. They specifically control for the following lifestyle factors: "smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and vegetable and fruit consumption." (Ctrl+f for "covariates") In the conclusion, they acknowledge: "Although we had carefully adjusted for potential confounding lifestyle-related factors in our analyses, we could not exclude the possibility that the results were confounded by unmeasured lifestyle-related factors." But if someone "works out heavily and supplements," that should show up in self reported physical activity, and indirectly in BMI.
  - throw1234651234 6y ago
    I missed that. Thanks a lot for the correction.
  - polynomial 6y ago
    I don't see "other supplements" in that list; surely they had to control for that as well?
  - madacol 6y ago
    Awesome!, thanks for the tip `(Ctrl+f for "covariates")`
  - NickM 6y ago
    But if someone "works out heavily and supplements," that should show up in self reported physical activity, and indirectly in BMI. Well, not to nitpick, but people with high muscle mass can easily end up with an "obese" BMI even if they have very low body fat. And it also doesn't take very many hours of working out per week to get jacked if you're doing heavy weightlifting and supplementing. No idea if such people are common enough to skew the results of this study significantly, but it still makes me wonder a bit.
    - ska 6y ago
      Sure, some (not a huge fraction, I'm guessing single digit percentage) of very physically active people are poorly modeled by BMI but it shouldn't matter if they are explictly handling these covariates. It's more an issue if there is something they haven't accounted for, as they point out.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

andrewem 6y ago

The paper this is based on, which might be a better link: https://ard.bmj.com/content/79/6/829 https://ard.bmj.com/content/79/6/829

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
faitswulff 6y ago
The study says the participants were 62% female, overwhelmingly ate more vegetables and supplements, exercised more than the control group, were mostly white, as well as self reported glucosamine supplementation - without dosage information. Overall it might be more indicative of wealth, education, and fitness than the effect of glucosamine. The paper itself says it’s not able to differentiate the effect from lifestyle changes: > Third, regular glucosamine use may be a marker for a healthy lifestyle, but it is hard to distinguish the confounding effects of a healthy lifestyle from the impact of regular supplementations in an observational study. Although we had carefully adjusted for potential confounding lifestyle-related factors in our analyses, we could not exclude the possibility that the results were confounded by unmeasured lifestyle-related factors. In general, with the current observational study design the possibility of residual confounding due to imprecise measurements or unknown factors cannot be excluded for all findings in our study, despite our careful adjustment of all measured confounders.
- chromatin 6y ago
  The confounders are, as you point out, incredible.
- m0llusk 6y ago
  That is possible but the large sample size may help. The study involved roughly a half million people with around one hundred thousand supplementing with glucosamine. With that many people and these big numbers the results are rather strong.
  - dahinds 6y ago

bigpumpkin 6y ago

are there dietary sources of glucosamine?

throw1234651234 6y ago
Yes - cartilage. If you eat chicken or something like that, eat the cartilage. You can do this on pre-cooked chickens you get from Sam's Club / Costco. If you eat chicken breasts only (which a lot of health-conscious people do), you don't get this benefit. I talked to Dr.Yang Jwing Ming (one of the few Kung Fu practioners with a Western phd and he said eating cartilage is one of the best ways to help reduce the risk of arthritis. Oh, and pig ears too, but I never tried that, being a Westerner and all.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  Would chicken bone broth have it?
  - Malic 6y ago
    Quite probably. I am assuming that home-made methods are similar as industrial scale methods (put a bunch of chicken bones and connective tissue in a vat of water, simmer, strain).
  - ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
    No, it's a myth: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/10/384948585/taking-stock-of-bone-broth-sorry-no-cure-all-here https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/10/384948585/ta... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5533136/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5533136/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/11/truth-about-bone-broth/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/11/truth-about-...
    - mrfusion 6y ago
      None of those mention Glucosamine. And they seem to be sour grapes articles, not sure why. One of the “myths” they dispel is “bone broth tastes good”. It does raise some good thoughts on why it’s not a super food.

CyberDildonics 6y ago

This title is not the title of the study. "Associations of regular glucosamine use with all-cause and cause-specific mortality: a large prospective cohort study" This does not mean it reduces all cause mortality. This is correlation, not causation. To take this further, there might be no limit to what you could correlate to some degree with all-cause mortality, especially since it might be heavily correlated to financial status, which would correlate to an enormous amount of other behaviors (eating avocados, owning a swimming pool, having a high ceiling, having your own bathroom, having a gym membership, organic food, name brand laundry soap, not taking public transportation, better healthy insurance, smoking habits, coffee quality, living in a low crime area, etc etc). Determining cause and effect takes a lot of control variables.

bernie_simon 6y ago
"The UK Biobank used a baseline touch screen questionnaire to assess several potential confounders: sociodemographic characteristics (age, sex, ethnicity, Townsend Deprivation Index, education and average total annual household income), lifestyle behaviours (smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and vegetable and fruit consumption), health conditions (CVD (myocardial infarction, angina or stroke), respiratory disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema), cancer, digestive disease (liver failure, cirrhosis or alcoholic liver disease), dementia, depression, longstanding illness, hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol), drug use (chondroitin, aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use), vitamin supplementation (vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, multivitamin and folic acid) and mineral and other dietary supplementation (calcium, iron, zinc, selenium and fish oil)). "
- richdougherty 6y ago
  Still, the authors accept correlation as a potential objection, despite doing their best to control for it. I suppose they need a randomised controlled study or something to be more certain. "Third, regular glucosamine use may be a marker for a healthy lifestyle, but it is hard to distinguish the confounding effects of a healthy lifestyle from the impact of regular supplementations in an observational study. Although we had carefully adjusted for potential confounding lifestyle-related factors in our analyses, we could not exclude the possibility that the results were confounded by unmeasured lifestyle-related factors. In general, with the current observational study design the possibility of residual confounding due to imprecise measurements or unknown factors cannot be excluded for all findings in our study, despite our careful adjustment of all measured confounders."

ryanmarsh 6y ago

People who take glucosamine often do so BECAUSE of their active lifestyle, most don't have a use for it otherwise. This study did not control for lifestyle. In other news, people who own Peloton shoes likely to live longer...

madacol 6y ago
> Covariates > The UK Biobank used a baseline touch screen questionnaire to assess several potential confounders: ..., lifestyle behaviours (smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and vegetable and fruit consumption), You seem to not have read other comments, where the same complaint is made, and its answers.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

What dosage is recommended?

gniv 6y ago
This other study suggests 2000mg per day: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/37/1/45.short https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/37/1/45.short

ve55 6y ago

I've been supplementing glucosamine along with a large amount of other things for awhile now. I'm not too bullish on it in humans, but it doesn't seem like it hurts, and is definitely cheap: https://nearcyan.com/supplements https://nearcyan.com/supplements My latest favorites that I'm a bit more hopeful for are glycine, spermadine, and rapamycin.

basch 6y ago
Do you take each Vitamin individually, or do you take a multivitamin? Do you make an effort to get large doses of these things from food first?
- ve55 6y ago
  Individually. Sometimes a few things are combined when a good option is available, but generally multivitamins don't give me what I want in the doses that I want. Since I tested all of my blood metrics beforehand, it's unlikely the market would have a 'perfect' vitamin for me. Especially since most of what I like to take isn't technically a vitamin. My diet is currently pretty un-optimized, so although I would prefer to consume a lot of things via diet, it's not guaranteed at all. But the extra bio-availability and such is likely nice
  - basch 6y ago
    Id be curious what it would look like if you tested your blood now, stopped taking them all, and radically modified your died, what kind of results you would get in a couple weeks. Daily intake of, tomato juice, kefir, sardines, salmon, spinach, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, pistachio, eggs. You could probably get a whole days worth of food into a snack, a salad, and a soup.
    - ve55 6y ago
      I wish it was easier to do intensive tracking of everything like that, but it's definitely a lot of work. Some supplements I have very clear before+after results, with the only probable cause being the supplement (e.g. vitamin D or magnesium), but a lot of others are hard to test, control for, find biomarkers for, etc. I do know there are a few people in the area that log literally every substance they eat in terms of grams, and then correlate it with all of their blood metrics, and use that to try to optimize each blood metric for what correlates with the lowest mortality rate. It's interesting, but this stuff is unfortunately a lot of work for average people to attempt. Here's a great example: https://twitter.com/Nearcyan/status/1282042301980835842 https://twitter.com/Nearcyan/status/1282042301980835842

nikolay 6y ago

I've been a big fan of N-Acetyl Glucosamine (aka NAG), which is one of the most underlooked safe supplement to deal with autoimmune disease. Could it be the same as the mobility supplements with Glucosamine?

m0zg 6y ago

To people who put too much stock in these "studies", consider this: as of July 2020 we _still_ have no conclusive answer if _eggs_ are good for you or not. What makes you believe this is any different?

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
We're still waiting for them to figure out salt.
fragmede 6y ago
Why would eggs, for which there isn't a chemical formula, nor a standard preparation, be easier to study? What even does "good for you" mean? Don't get confused between mass-media popular "science" and things science can actually do - like measure whether a dozen eggs a day will raise your LDL and HDL (cholesterol) and cause heart disease - and drawing wild conclusions (especially right now) from pre-print articles that are used to sell magazine articles to use as justification to eat chocolate and drink wine under the guise of "it's good for you".

amasad 6y ago

I wonder if you get enough of it on a highly carnivorous diet -- bone broth, bone marrow etc.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
I doubt it as many people mention it has great benefit on dogs, and their diet is pretty much all that.

matsemann 6y ago

https://examine.com/supplements/glucosamine/ https://examine.com/supplements/glucosamine/ Always used this site when trying to find unbiased information, and also not be to hyped about a single study. However now the effect matrix is hidden behind a paywall. When talking about joint health: As a young and very active person my biggest problem is overtraining injuries. Wish I knew how to be able to train as much as I would like to, with just a simple supplement or so...

adrr 6y ago
There's always peptides that do work with mouse models but there aren't any decent safety studies on them with humans. I really wish there was a push to get safety and efficacy studies around BPC-157 and other peptides.
pkid 6y ago
Look up Keith Baar. He has some suggestions.

nazca 6y ago

I've given glucosamine to my dogs for years, and I can clearly notice a difference in their joint health and how stiff and sore they are after long runs ('long-run': 15-25 miles, measured on GPS collars). When I run out of glucosamine, or just drop off of giving it to them for whatever reason, I see them fall back pretty quickly. And when I restart them on it, I notice a response in a few days. I also give give them fish oil pills, but I've never been able to notice a difference.

GloriousKoji 6y ago
Purely anecdotal data but a I know a good number of dogs and cats that had really good results supplementing with glucosamine. As for me personally and few other friends and family, glucosamine supplements didn't have much of a noticeable effect.
- xvilka 6y ago
  Probably because we, humans, don't move as much as cats and dogs.
coredog64 6y ago
Fish oil is more of a natural anti-inflammatory than a fix for the problem.
hlfy_hn 6y ago
Would you be so kind to tell me 1. The amount and frequency of glucosamine you give to your dog 2. The size of your dog (kg/pound)
- nazca 6y ago
  I give 500mg per day. My two dogs are 55 and 65 lbs. The amazon product number I use is: B00V45IQF6. They have dosage info on the label for different sized dogs.
mkl 6y ago
This matches glucosamine's effect on me pretty well. I have a genetic joint condition that makes any repetitive motion cause damage and pain. Glucosamine (4500mg/day) is provably the one thing that lets me have a normal career (carefully chosen job still). If I stop taking it for a few days, that's a problem. I stepped up to that dosage, noticing clear improvements a week or so after each increase. I couldn't run 15 miles though! Walking 1km is risky even on a good day, even with glucosamine.

Abaqus49 6y ago

I was suffering from severe knee pain due to cartilage wear and started taking liquid Glucosamine supplement as per doctor advice since 4 years. Now I'm perfectly OK and run daily.

Fezzik 6y ago

Like others, I give my dogs glucosamine and it seems to have clear health benefits, but I have tried numerous dosages for myself and when I consume any meaningful amount it gives me absolutely wretched headaches about a day or two after consumption. Something to be aware if you start taking glucosamine and get headaches, it’s probably the glucosamine.

beagle3 6y ago
Perhaps you have some undiagnosed shellfish allergy? FWIW, I've noticed iHerb has started selling shellfish-free glucosamine.
- Fezzik 6y ago
  I had that thought but have never formally tested it. I do eat an above-average amount of crab, clams, scallops, shrimp (tail on), etc... and I always feel great afterwards. Obviously a glucosamine tablet is far more concentrated, so I could very well be allergic. I’ll definitely checkout that brand though!

evo_9 6y ago

If you are interested in digging into this stuff, and what really works medically/scientifically based on reviewed evidence and sources such as Cochrane Reviews, I can't recommend Dr Stanfields youtube channel high enough: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBradStanfield/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBradStanfield/videos Also here is his video on Sulforaphane which Glucosamine activates. He goes into detail as to how this mechanism works. Because of his video/latest research presented I changed to taking Broccomax because you need Myrosinase to actvite the SGS for it's full effect, he goes into detail on this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAb1eQbRAe0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAb1eQbRAe0 Cochrane Review he uses as his primary source: https://www.cochrane.org/CD007176/LIVER_antioxidant-supplements-for-prevention-of-mortality-in-healthy-participants-and-patients-with-various-diseases https://www.cochrane.org/CD007176/LIVER_antioxidant-suppleme...

hkt 6y ago
Is a Cochrane review really a primary source? They're meta-analysis, which I'd think of as secondary. In the case linked, the analysis seems pretty unequivocally to not support supplementing: "We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention. Beta-carotene and vitamin E seem to increase mortality, and so may higher doses of vitamin A. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered as medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing." Did I miss something?
- DiabloD3 6y ago
  Vitamin E research also ends up being a bit YMMV: most commercially available Vitamin E is one form only, alpha tocopherol... except Vit E is 8 different forms: 4 tocopherols and 4 tocotrienols. The research that has been done so far basically indicates alpha tocopherol-only supplementation aligns identically with unspecified-Vitamin-E-is-bad research.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  The op talks about sulforaphane but then links to an article about vitamin a and e(I don't know why) They're totally different chemicals that work through completely different pathways. And a study on vitamin a and e etc doesn't tell you much about other supplements. Just like how a study on does whether or not statins are associated with reduced mortality tells you little about whether or not ACE inhibitors are associated with reduced mortality. Also I don't think op meant primary source as in primary vs secondary sources but meant in the sense of "this doctor primarily uses Cochrane as his source for information"

GekkePrutser 6y ago

I do indeed note that my minor (RSI related) joint issues almost immediately disappear when I take that stuff. It seems indeed quite beneficial.

gootdude 6y ago
What dosage do you take and how long does the pain relief last?
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  I take Glucosamine / Chondroitine Complex 500/100mg. One or 2 per day. It's hard to say how long, it does take a day or 2 to kick in (when I said "immediately" I meant within a couple days when I start taking it. I probably shouldn't have used that term.) I'm not very strict with medication so I tend to stop it when I don't have issues. But especially in my elbows where I only have mild pain it seems to help a lot. In my wrists it doesn't as much, but I think the pain there is not totally joint-related.
JackMorgan 6y ago
Indeed, I'm also having RSI issues and would like to know

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago

It's interesting to see that even on HN people don't know the difference between correlation and causation.

hkt 6y ago
I'd guess there's not much cause for it among computer science people. I've noticed this in the past: empirical disciplines are better at this stuff. Still, I can't quite work out if a biology degree would cause somebody to understand it better..
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  In my experience, most empirical majors beat you over the head with the chanting of "correlation does not imply causation" pretty much every term. It's too bad that it's one of those things that's not naturally intuitive to people.
- notafraudster 6y ago
  I mean one of the two dominant frameworks for causal inference is Judea Pearl's directed acyclic graphs / do-calculus, and Pearl is surely a computer scientist.
Dayshine 6y ago
Have you read the paper? They adjust for damn near everything including reverse causation. What confounders do you believe the UK biobank data can't account for?
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  It doesn't matter if you eliminate 10 million confounds. No matter how good your correlation study is, it cannot establish a causation. To do that you need random assignment at the very least.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    ... and even that gives you the wrong answer if your diagnostic specificity is faulty. This last is why we keep seeing muddled reports that "antidepressants don't work". Diagnosis of "depression" is a snakepit; the only known way to discern which among at least six conditions you might have, all labeled "depression", is to see what medications work, if any. Imagine trying to conduct a plausible RCT for that. "Gold standard"? Ha.

shadykiller 6y ago

Quote: "Glucosamine is a polysaccharide that is found naturally in cartilaginous joint tissues, bones, skin, ligaments, and nails" Why not just eat natural sources like cartilage, bone broth, skin etc ?

bitxbit 6y ago
This so much. Absorption rate could vary quite a bit and it’s nearly impossible to research and find a good source these days due to insane number of supplement manufacturers in the market (I partly blame Amazon for this).
mkl 6y ago
Glucosamine tablets are made from natural sources, usually seafood (e.g. shells of shrimp, lobsters, and crabs).
- hinkley 6y ago
  I’ve heard that in japan (or at least parts of it) they eat shrimp whole, and it’s kind of amusing when visitors bite off the tails. Also the little “bones” from certain fish I expect do the same.
  - ranma42 6y ago
    There's even snacks that are just the fried fish bones. http://seriouseats.com/2011/03/the-nasty-bits-fried-fish-bones.html http://seriouseats.com/2011/03/the-nasty-bits-fried-fish-bon...
jiofih 6y ago
Interestingly most sources I could find on the web say categorically that “No natural food sources of glucosamine exist”, while the the supplement is made from sea shells. All resources related to canine health on the other hand mention cartilage, bone marrow and beef trachea as rich in glucosamine... someone is being dishonest there.
- 6y ago

viburnum 6y ago

I wonder if humans used to eat more bones ... I had a physical anthropology professor who studied an ancient site in east Africa where it appeared humans got a fair amount of food from eating leftovers from lions and whatnot, breaking open bones and eating marrow. Basically humans were in between the predators and the vultures.

jdhawk 6y ago
Yes, and even more recently, the stew pot extracted a lot more than the boneless chicken breast of today.

bhopballooo 6y ago

Is it a simple case of pain-free joints enabling one to exercise more?

autisticcurio 6y ago
Every time you move, the body releases adrenaline, so you are not far wrong in your line of thought. The adrenal glands produces around 180 different hormones including adrenaline, so protecting or even attempting to improve their function would be a logical natural pain killing route to take. Hint they are layer upon layer of epithelial cells. Of course other factors like the body attacking itself is also a problem which the adrenal glands alone cant "fix", for example too much sodium increases the Th17 cells to the point they start attacking the body. T cells from Thymus, B cells from bone marrow. However considering civilisations & Religions have existed for over 10,000years dating back to Sumerian times, observation was the only "scientific" methods available at the time, and Religions had to keep their followers healthy for the next attack, so looking into different religious fasting methods could also improve health outcomes. The world record for a water only fast, still in the Guinness book of world records is 382days, carried out in 1971 at the University of Dundee. Having done an 18day water only fast myself and felt like a teenager again, I'd highly recommend investigating it to others. A US movement in the 1950's called the Hygienists and Shelton were big advocates. Also consider the immune system attacks the food we eat, so as our immune cell count falls during a fast, are there still more immune cells now working solely removing damaged cells from the body? Its suggested viruses need carbs as noted by the use of the Keto BCAA Lysine for Cold Sores, bacteria builds biofilms when they go dormant in the body but are not impenetrable to the attacking immune system either. So there seems to be some merit with a water only fast for some, however sudden death is a risk to those with undiagnosed conditions, a bit like we see with some seemingly healthy people dying of covid. Either way, the human body, in fact any lifeform is an extremely complex biochemical and electrical real time puzzle where many chemicals play their part in lengthening life spans or shortening life spans. I wouldnt bet my life on just one supplement, unlike Linus Pauling and Vit C, its effects like all supplements, need to be put in context in the scheme of things keeping us alive, healthy and happy.

ibobev 6y ago

All-Cause Mortality? Is it make you also somehow immune to fire arms for example? Just the title makes the article to view unserious.

qwerty456127 6y ago
Statistically perhaps? I.e. there surely are chemicals and infections which make you more, hmmm, adventurous. Perhaps it might make you more careful and less likely to get shot.
jdhn 6y ago
>Is it make you also somehow immune to fire arms for example? No, you have to start off with daily injections of small arms fires (think .22 caliber) in order to begin building immunity. Over time you gain immunity and then can work your way up to larger calibers.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Reminiscent of the biological testing approach here: https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
- tomcam 6y ago
  That was one of the low key funniest things I’ve ever read on hacking news
  - tomcam 6y ago
    Hacker News. I’m an idiot. But I stand by the rest!
- tluyben2 6y ago
  It is a Reddit worthy response, but it immediately made me think of a KungFu movie I saw in the 80s where the monks were trained to withstand gunshots (multiple) to their heart. Now I just cannot find what (incredibly bad but apparently memorable) movie that was!
6y ago

lgats 6y ago

Regular glucosamine supplementation was associated with lower mortality due to all causes, cancer, CVD, respiratory and digestive diseases. associated, not direct causation

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lettergram 6y ago

Probably because those who are old start moving again with lower joint pain. My 80 year old grandfather is the most fit person I know. Super healthy, but literally lifts rocks and gardens every day. To contrast other family members are in their 50s with diabetes and heart conditions. Keeping active is key. Remove peoples joint pain (which is what this supplement is used for) and of course they reduce mortal across the board.

tomcam 6y ago
Props to your grandfather. I can barely lift even a small garden.
- jagannathtech 6y ago
  lol

llama9000 6y ago

The bit questioning its usefulness in addressing arthritis is pretty much bullshit, as it's working for my parents and even my cat - Who went from dragging himself around to going all jumpy within DAYS of having it mixed in with the food. Glucosamine + Chondrotin + MSM - This supplement combination is ideal.

daodedickinson 6y ago
Yes, we started giving Glycoflex to our dogs every day going back decades.
MMTP 6y ago
The evidence for Glucosamine alone to do much about arthritis is poor. Glucosamine + Chondrotin + MSM is a different matter entirely and is not the same as what the author is speaking about.

hirenj 6y ago

I wonder why we need to supplement glucosamine (e.g. to treat arthritis) when it is synthesised by the body from glucose in one of our basic metabolic pathways. I could only imagine this becomes a problem unless a) the enzymes responsible stop working or b) if the glucose gets shunted off to some other purpose. It’s also funny that chondroitin supplementation does the job too, because it actually contains no glucosamine, but contains monosaccharides that are derived from glucosamine (N-acetyl Galactosamine). I think there’s probably a very interesting answer to these metabolic questions that could shed a lot of light onto the phenotypes of aging. That said, I don’t know what evidence is out there for systemic lack of e.g. glycosaminoglycans in aged populations, or even in arthritic cohorts.

hhas01 6y ago
In absence of good, hard, scientific evidence of effects above and beyond placebo, I’m gonna go with “Cos it’s easy to bottle and it’s easy to sell”. And profitable too, I have no doubt. Thanks to Orrin Hatch, US supplement peddlers don’t even have to prove their products are safe, never mind effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_Education_Act_of_1994 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_... I bet the oft-reviled Big Pharma (who, amusingly enough, are some of the biggest manufactures of supplements too) just wish all their products could enjoy such lax standards of regulation. Meanwhile, to everyone else, I wholeheartedly recommend The Poison Squad: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-squad/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poison-squ... https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-poison-squad-by-deborah-blum/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-poison-s...

hhas01 6y ago

Article title is gross overreach, if not outright wrong. IANAS, but even I know Correlation does not mean Causation. The paper itself only says “associated with”, not “responsible for”. Being an observational study of self-selecting cohorts, even with the authors’ attempts to control the confounders will be massive. Honestly, this is the standard of reporting I’d expect from yellow-bellied fish wrappers like the Daily Mail. Please do better.

hrishios 6y ago

This is an impossible field to be working in - I know - and it's to do with the way our medical research and treatment systems are set up. We began as a species focused on making sick people healthy, and it's the way the entire system works. It's near impossible to get studies approved that tackle aging and proactive healthcare with drugs, as they will largely need to look at the effects on people who are healthy now, but will almost assuredly die from dementia, Alzheimer's and heart disease. I understand why it is the way it is, but it's frustrating to see the system wait until you have heart disease in your 70s before doing something about it.

hhas01 6y ago
You do realize the reason people now die of dementia is because medical science and improved standards of living have largely eliminated all the things that used to kill them before they got old enough to develop it? The same goes for cancers. As for heart disease, that’s largely a product of lifestyle choices: smoking, obesity, inactivity. And doctors already tell their patients to eat healthily and exercise daily, but who wants to hear that when they’re young enough not to feel the consequences, or old enough not to want to change their ways now? Hence the eternal market for easy, quick magical pills and their silver-tongued salesmen that promise to cure it all. We began as a species programmed to spot the difference between a zebra and lion on the plains of the Serengeti, and we’ve barely evolved since—if anything, we’re even easier to hack now. Just ask the vampires.