Tag Archive for: glucosamine

Dealing with Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness

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Muscle soreness generally occurs after a new workout routine, especially weight training. It generally involves eccentric contractions: the simplest way to explain it is the resistance to a movement. During a bicep curl, eccentric contractions would be resisting the lowering of the weight as you return to the starting position. But that’s not exactly what I mean. This is an overall fatigue and soreness that affects more than muscle. Let’s call it delayed-onset body soreness.

What Causes Delayed-Onset Body Soreness?

Movements that are repetitive, that last for hours, that aren’t part of your normal routine—those are the likely causes of delayed-onset soreness. It doesn’t matter how fit you are or how strong you are. While fitness and strength will help, it’s still going to happen occasionally. When you perform movements, even if they’re as simple as standing and answering questions like I did, there are stresses on the ligaments, tendons, and joints as well as the muscles, minute after minute, hour after hour. Micro-tears can occur in multiple types of tissue, and that can cause inflammation and pain.

What you feel the next day is actually the repair process in progress.

Can You Prevent DOBS?

Probably not because it’s caused by something you do infrequently: rake leaves, walk up and down arena steps, shovel snow, or help someone move. But stretching on a regular basis probably helps. Ever stand up, take a deep breath, and reach over your head to stretch just about every muscle in your body? Something as simple as that a few times a day will help keep you limber. Yoga would be great but whatever it is, it has to be consistent to be effective.

The Bottom Line

Infrequent events with repetitive movements are going to happen. I don’t think there’s a need to specifically train for them other than stretching on a regular basis. Taking nutrients such as glucosamine and vitamin C may help the repair process; you can take them in the days leading up to the event as well as after, along with whatever pain meds work best for you. No question that regular aerobic exercise and strength training will help, but most likely won’t prevent soreness. The good news is that this is a problem that should resolve itself quickly.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: https://www.acsm.org/docs/default-source/files-for-resource-library/delayed-onset-muscle-soreness-(doms).pdf?sfvrsn=8f430e18_2

Soreness and Specificity of Training

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The first Super Bowl Webinar I ever did was about specificity of training. A running buddy years ago summarized how to run faster this way: “If you want to run faster, you gotta run faster.” In other words, even short bursts of running very fast would eventually help build speed more than slow, long runs.

The key element of specificity of training is that you can’t run faster by swimming or cycling or weight training; you have to do that by running. The same concept applies to just about any physical endeavor. Chefs can’t improve their knife skills by running or weight training: they have to spend hours chopping and slicing.

If you use an elliptical trainer or recumbent bike or you ride a bicycle, you’re training specific muscles to fire in specific patterns. When you change to another mode of exercise such as walking or running, you’re going to use the same muscles but in different ways; some muscles maintain balance and others maintain posture in addition to those that are doing the bulk of the work moving your body. And they’re different in different modes of exercise; even with all my education and experience, I was surprised at how sore I was when I had to switch from running to walking. Until you’ve trained those muscles for the particular activity, you’re going to be sore. And the sad news is that it gets worse as you get older.

Dealing with Discomfort

The important thing to understand is that this discomfort is temporary; the exception is if you had an orthopedic issue that never has been resolved. For me it was my knee, and now that’s resolved. If you’ve avoided getting something repaired, it’s your call but the longer you wait, the more you risk not getting back the mobility you had.

If you’ve changed your mode of exercise, here are some ways to deal with it:

  1. Start with heat followed by easy stretching. We think that our muscles and connective tissue are like rubber bands while stretching. Not exactly accurate, but warm muscles are more pliable so doing some kind of warm up will help you avoid injury. Easy does it; stretching too far too fast is a recipe for even more pain.
  2. Increase fluid intake to “flush” out some of the breakdown products of muscle and other connective tissue.
  3. Use glucosamine and vitamin C to help the connective tissue repair process. The purpose of breakdown is to build back better, but to do that, you need the nutrients that repair the microtears in the connective tissue.
  4. Ice specific areas, especially the front of the shins; shin splints is the common name for pain in this area. The connective tissue compartment that holds the tibialis anterior muscle (the one that pulls up your toes) isn’t very pliable, so reducing inflammation in that muscle can really help.
  5. Most of the soreness you’re feeling is from inflammation. If you feel you need to, and have no medical reason you can’t, use a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug such as ibuprofen; it relieves pain, but reducing inflammation is key to your recovery and continued progress.

The Bottom Line

It can literally be a pain to start to exercise or change your mode of exercise. There’s a price to pay but in comparison to the benefits you’ll get, the cost is minimal. Be sure to start slow: if you push too far too fast, you’re going to set back your progress while you recover. In the long run, you’ll get farther by taking small steps so you can keep going without a pause for injuries.

We’re not done talking about walking yet, but if you have any stories about finding the right shoe for you, let me know. I’m doing background research on that, so I won’t write about it next week—you have time to send me your stories.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

The Bottom Line on Cats and Dogs and Supplements

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One of my all-time favorite movie lines is by Bill Murray’s character in the original Ghostbusters. He goes on a rant about the coming plague of ghosts and says “…dogs and cats living together…” It’s the delivery more than the words, but it still makes me laugh. I often blurt it out when people talk about all the things that could go wrong if X happens.

I decided to search the literature for specific supplements that can benefit cats and dogs, whether they live together or not. There’s no research on multivitamins-multiminerals per se, although there’s some info on the use of vitamins and minerals as additives to food.

Cats and Supplements

There are two primary areas of research on supplements in cats. The first is the amino acid taurine and the other is joint issues. The lack of taurine in a cat’s diet can result in compromised immune systems, eye problems including blindness, deafness, cardiomyopathy and heart failure, and reproductive issues. Researchers have found that taurine supplementation can increase the taurine level in a cat’s cardiac tissue. One more thing: soy interferes with taurine absorption or utilization, so make sure that the food you feed your cat is soy-free.

The other issue is joint problems such as arthritis. In research on cats, the same blends used in humans that consist of glucosamine, chondroitin, Boswellia, and fish oil help alleviate pain as assessed by owner and veterinarian pain evaluations.

Dogs and Supplements

The big issue with dogs is joint problems such as osteoarthritis. Research shows that the same nutrients recommended for cats and humans are appropriate for dogs: glucosamine, chondroitin, Boswellia, and fish oil. When it comes to amino acids, dogs require 10 essential amino acids to be healthy. While they can get that from vegetarian protein, research shows that dogs can smell it when meals don’t contain all the essential amino acids and will avoid them. That’s some sniffer dogs have!

In the category of interesting research, the amino acid l-arginine together with antioxidants has been shown to benefit dogs with memory issues. Also medium-chain triglycerides are being tested in epileptic dogs to see if the supplement can help reduce seizures. Maybe a teaspoon of coconut oil every day can benefit these dogs—there’s no harm in it while waiting for the research to be completed.

The Bottom Line

We love our cats and dogs and want them to being as healthy as they can be. Targeted supplementation for specific issues is certainly warranted, and it’s probably good to use the same recommendations for us humans and for our best friends: eat better, eat less, and move more. You’ll both be healthier for it!

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References:
1. Vet Med Sci. 2019 Aug;5(3):325-335. doi: 10.1002/vms3.1822.
2. J Nutr. 1995 Nov;125(11):2831-7. doi: 10.1093/jn/125.11.2831.
3. Am J Vet Res. 1992 Feb;53(2):237-41.

What to Do About Aching Joints

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When we stop to consider what prevents us from moving as much and as freely as we would like, the main culprit would probably be our joints: knees for most, with hips a close second. Shoulders are up there, along with our feet and hands. One of my problem areas is my thumbs in the metacarpal joints of both hands.

Everything we’ve talked about so far leads us to our joints. The muscles attach to bones via tendons across joints, and that allows for movement. There are ligaments that hold bones in place, several types of cartilage that provide cushioning, even specialized fluid within joints. It’s the interaction of all those factors combined with the damage we’ve experienced and our genetics that results in the pain we may experience that inhibits motion. What do we do about it?

Without question, the most important is stretching and strengthening. I’ve written about that already, but it warrants a reminder. Maintaining the range of motion of each joint improves our mobility and ability to use our limbs properly. Our physical therapist has a saying, “Motion is lotion,” which is a way of saying the more you move, the easier it is to move. We should all move as much as we can without overdoing it. Here’s an example: Paula and I had to give up dance lessons because she has arthritis in her feet, and dancing was just too much stress on all the little joints in the foot. For all of us, the challenge is finding that happy medium between moving enough to keep everything going and moving so much it adds to the damage.

In terms of nutrients, all parts of the joints are connective tissue; the basic nutrient for every one is glucosamine. Our bodies are supposed to make as much as we need but often don’t. Any type of glucosamine can be beneficial. Chondroitin and hyaluronic acid are forms of glycosaminoglycans. In addition, vitamin C is also important for all connective tissue. There are many nutrients that may impact the inflammation in joints such as tart cherry juice and turmeric. But it begins with a good foundation, and that’s glucosamine.

Everything to date leads us to the final part of this series of living every day. I’ll cover that on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Bioavailability Ends with Bioactivity

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Here’s where we stand: we’ve digested a nutrient and it’s been absorbed into the bloodstream. How is it going to be used? How do we get the benefit of vitamin C, magnesium, alpha-carotene, or caffeine? Let’s take a look.

Many target cells have receptors that are specific to a nutrient, like a wrench that fits only one size of bolt. For example, when blood sugar rises after pasta is digested and absorbed, insulin is released from the pancreas. Insulin will attach to a specific insulin receptor on the cell membrane, and that will allow a glucose molecule to enter the cell to be used. Cells also have receptors for vitamin C to be absorbed into cells.

That’s fairly straightforward. The next step would be actually performing a function once the nutrient enters the target tissue. Let’s look at caffeine for example. There’s a genetic factor; one version of a gene can process caffeine quickly while a mutation of that gene processes it slowly. I can drink coffee and immediately go to sleep. Others may process it slowly and may not be able to sleep in the evening after a cup of coffee for lunch. Same nutrient, different effects on different people.

In addition, there are numerous enzymes that help make chemicals such as hormones or structures such as cartilage. If enough of an enzyme isn’t being manufactured or it’s blocked from being utilized, that can have an impact on how well a nutrient works. An example would be insulin; if cells are not producing enough receptors, or the receptors are resistant to insulin, blood sugar would rise. That leads to overall insulin resistance, one aspect of being prediabetic.

Another example would be the manufacture of glucosamine. The process requires fructose-6-phosphate and the amino acid glutamine; the first is a result of the breakdown of sugar while the later is the most prevalent protein-building amino acid in the body. The manufacture of glucosamine also requires an enzyme. If a person doesn’t make enough of that enzyme, that affects the production of glucosamine which then impacts the production of other forms of connective tissue such as cartilage, ligaments, and bone.

The Bottom Line

Every day there are new nutrition products introduced that are supposed to be better for you because more nutrients are available, but nutrition just doesn’t work that way. As I’ve tried to show you this week, the problem is that it isn’t quite as simple as what you see in Internet ads. Nutrients have to be digested, absorbed, and used by the body, and things can go wrong at any step along the way. Each individual’s body is unique and comes with its own idiosyncrasies and difficulties, and that’s what makes nutrition so complicated.

Maybe you’re thinking, “What’s the point if so much can go wrong?” What you have to remember is that most of the time everything works just as it should; not everything related to bioavailability goes wrong in every person. It’s also a matter of degree—maybe absorption will be cut by 50% or activity reduced 10%. I want you to understand why some nutrients won’t work as expected for a particular person, and why claims of better bioavailability aren’t a guarantee.

Yet we’re still here, aren’t we? We’re here because our ancestors survived. To steal a line from “Jurassic Park”: Nature finds a way.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: http://bit.ly/2raDviy

 

How to Reduce Mechanical Pain

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Every morning, the process of getting my body moving is challenging. My back is stiff and my knee is tender, on the border of painful. The longer I’m up, the better I move. After about 30 minutes, I can get my workout. It takes my knee 10 minutes to warm-up once I start running.

I’m going to talk about pain this week—specifically, three types of pain and what may help. Today it’s mechanical pain. Remember the time you slipped and twisted your knee? Wrenched your shoulder when you picked up something you thought was a lot lighter? Broke your ankle skiing? Those are the types of injuries that can lead to mechanical changes that can result in pain; the injury heals but the tendons, ligaments, and cartilage are not quite the same. It can lead to pain, even many years later. That’s what happened to my right knee.

What can you do about it? Strengthen the supporting tissues to the extent you can. I went to a physical therapist, got an evaluation, was assigned some exercises and I do them regularly. It has strengthened the muscles that directly and indirectly impact the knee. While it’s still tender when I wake up, the swelling is gone and I can run if I choose. To me, that’s the most important thing. But I also take a timed release non-steroidal anti-inflammatory in the morning and use omega-3s, turmeric, and glucosamine twice a day. That works for me. You may need more pain relievers or you may need none.

That’s how you can deal with mechanically-induced pain. On to nerve-induced pain on Thursday and disease-related pain on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Supplements for Low Back Pain

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To cope with pain in the lower back, we’ve looked at solutions that deal with mechanics: trying to increase the fluid levels of the discs as well as stretching and strengthening the core muscles. The next logical step is to cover some supplements that can help with low back pain.

Where there’s pain, there’s inflammation. Two nutrients can help reduce inflammation in bones and joints: omega-3 . . .

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