InfoMedica’s Bottom Line:

Repair, Restore, and Rebuild Joints

Patients dealing with joint damage, stiffness, lubrication loss, and arthritis need more than pain relief: they need a strong recommendation to repair joints and stop the downward spiral of joint degradation.

Fortunately, there are nutrients that preserve and repair cushioning cartilage, enhance elasticity of ligaments and tendons, and protect the bones of the joints that allow your patients to feel mobile and active again with ease. Together, these ingredients:

• Rebuild joint collagen and cartilage
• Stop osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis joint pain
• Fight joint inflammation safely and effectively
• Help your patients stay active and mobile without pain

Joint Pain is Common. Effective Solutions Aren’t.

If your patients seek you out for treatment because of aching knees, a stiff back, and swollen joints in their fingers, they may have had symptoms for quite some time but have wondered what—if anything—they can do about it. Or, they may have noticed a slowing down of their walking pace, trouble getting out of bed in the morning, or a stiffer gait when they move. Their joint pain may have simply snuck up on them after developing for years.

Or they may be one of the millions of Americans with osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or other joint disorders. If they have physically demanding jobs, they may have felt some amount of joint pain every day, and as a result, were taking potentially dangerous medicines to counter it.

Regardless of the reasons, your patients need safe and effective nutrients that actually help repair, restore, and rebuild their joints.

What Can You Recommend? Powerful Nutrients.

Type II collagen is one of the most important for articular joints—the ones that move. In fact, it makes up to 90 percent of the collagen in those structures. While collagen is obviously produced naturally in our bodies, supplemental sources can be very effective, too.

For at least twenty years, researchers have investigated the role of supplemental type II collagen in people with joint pain (typically knee pain) due to osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Overall, results have been impressive. Like all joint-rebuilding nutrients, it can take time—some of the studies last for three months or more. Aside from stopping pain symptoms, supplemental type II collagen may also interfere with T-cells that attack existing collagen in the joints, as in cases of rheumatoid arthritis.

In one clinical study, type II collagen was used alongside acetaminophen (one brand name is Tylenol) and tested against acetaminophen alone in two groups of volunteers with osteoarthritis. The group using type II collagen definitely came out ahead—they had significantly less knee pain, better knee flexibility, and better walking scores. In fact, looking at the study, it’s tough to see how much impact the over-the-counter drug acetaminophen had at all.

Of course, patients don’t have to be affected with osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis to reap the benefits of type II collagen. A clinical study of healthy, active people found that it helped them exercise longer without pain, alleviate pain from exercise, and improve knee extension and flexibility.

In another six-month human study, researchers found that by combining type II collagen with glucosamine and chondroitin, individuals with symptoms of hand osteoarthritis fared better than those just using glucosamine and chondroitin alone. The researchers also noted that those receiving the extra boost from type II collagen improved faster and more steadily over the year with further improvements and better symptom relief.

Glucosamine hydrochloride and chondroitin sulfate also help the joints. Both these nutrients are raw materials that the body uses to repair and rebuild joints. Because of this, they work more slowly than type II collagen but are quite valuable. Combining them with other nutrients can make them even more effective for preventing and repairing joint damage and relieving joint pain.

In the body, glucosamine is a polysaccharide compound naturally found in cartilage. For people with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, it not only helps rebuild those cushioning, shock-absorbing structures, but over time, relieves pain as well.

Chondroitin sulfate is a glycosaminoglycan (often shortened to GAG) which, in turn, makes up cartilage, connective tissue, bone, and skin. It helps extend the life and activity of chondrocytes (cartilage producing cells), reduces inflammation, and strengthens the load-bearing bones in the joints that sit just under the cartilage, called “subchondral” bone.

Often researched in combination, chondroitin and glucosamine are a powerful pair: they are equal to the prescription drug celecoxib (also known as Celebrex) for stopping knee pain. Even chondroitin alone has been objectively shown to reduce pain sensation on MRI brain scans of patients in a clinical study.

Both the glucosamine/chondroitin and the celecoxib groups saw about 50 percent reductions in pain swelling, fluid around the joints, and other knee osteoarthritis symptoms by the end of the six-month trial. Bear in mind that these patients had severe osteoarthritis knee pain, and that glucosamine and chondroitin didn’t cause side effects like body aches, diarrhea, gas, insomnia, and risk of congestive heart failure seen with celecoxib. So in that sense, the nutrient option is far superior, fixing the problem without causing complications.

Hyaluronic acid, another GAG, is one of the building blocks of collagen and cartilage. It adds to the spacing between joints, scavenges free radicals, and is critical for joint lubrication, so you want to have hyaluronic acid on board with any joint-rebuilding regimen. As osteoarthritis progresses, hyaluronic acid loses its shape and structure as the condition wears down its molecular weight. When this happens, it can’t properly lubricate joints or keep them from grinding together.

The supplemental hyaluronic acid nutrient has been shown to improve muscle aches and joint pain by 75 percent in just eight weeks.

In a three-month study, this same ingredient not only relieved muscle pain and reduced synovial fluid pooling in knees, it actually helped regenerate muscle, too. It really shows how important hyaluronic acid can be in your joint-restoring regimen.

Boswellia (Boswellia serrata) is noted for relieving joint pain and has over 2,500 years of use in classic Ayurvedic practice in India.

One of the key compounds in boswellia is called acetyl-11-keto-B-boswellic acid, popularly known as AKBA. In fact, in most boswellia research, AKBA is cited as a primary reason the extract works so well to relieve pain, digestive inflammation, respiratory conditions, and may even protect the brain against stroke.

Based on this, higher levels of AKBA are a must, but within limits. It’s not unusual to find extracts that have artificially increased (spiked) levels of AKBA or are essentially all AKBA. That is a problem, because there are other compounds in the plant that are beneficial, too.

One compound that is not beneficial in boswellia is called beta-boswellic acid (BBA). This boswellic acid makes up 25 percent of the family and is pro-inflammatory. The most medicinal and powerful boswellia extracts are purified and standardized to virtually eliminate BBA, keeping it under 5 percent. The most effective boswellia extract is standardized so that you’re getting at least 10 percent AKBA and virtually no beta-boswellic acids.

Boswellia is a natural medicine powerhouse. Researchers have found that boswellic acids are better than certain conventional drugs (and other botanicals, too) at stopping 5-lipoxygenase (5-LOX). 5-LOX is an inflammatory enzyme often associated with rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. This type of inflammation can be difficult to treat with any other botanical but getting it under control is essential for fighting pain and further joint destruction.

Aside from reducing 5-LOX, scientific research shows that boswellia inhibits cartilage-destroying enzymes similar to the actions of glucosamine, so it doesn’t just stop pain, it stops the actual progression of damage in joints and muscles. Unlike conventional prescription or over-the-counter drugs, it isn’t masking anything—it’s helping to heal the joints.

Help Your Patients Be Active and Mobile

The pain, stiffness, and other symptoms of arthritis and joint damage are difficult to live with, and the prescription drugs so often used to treat it can create devastating complications. These drugs do not facilitate repair and strengthening. The combination discussed here relieves pain and helps rebuild the cushioning structure of the joints. If your patients are tired of conventional approaches to dealing with rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, or just routine joint pain that comes with high levels of physical activity, recommending these effective ingredients to help them rediscover mobility and relief without the risks may be the perfect option.

We recommend: Proprietary Blend 1,740 mg Glucosamine hydrochloride, Chondroitin sulfate, Hyaluronic acid complex (hyaluronic acid, polysaccharides, and collagen), 450 mg Boswellia (Boswellia serrata)  Gum Resin Extract (BOS-10®) standardized to contain ≥70% total organic and boswellic acids with AKBA ≥ 10%, with ≤ 5% beta-boswellic acids, 40.5 mg Type II Collagen