Humans are arrogant. I’m no different. Let’s face it, we all think we know everything. It happens to us when we hit puberty, and it never seems to end. But I gotta tell you, I learned something a few years back from a horse.
I know what you’re thinking, what can a horse teach you? They don’t even have opposing thumbs. Well, a horse taught me something. See, the problem is, most times with humans, when we take something, like medicine or a vitamin, we run the large and common risk of it having a placebo effect.
I told you that to tell you this. Some time back in the mid-1990s when arthritis in my shoulder got really bad, I took a pro-active approach. I spoke to doctors, authorities from the arthritis foundation I had been working with at the time. I bended just about every ear I could. And everyone pointed to glucosamine.
So I went out and bought some glucosamine. The first thing I noticed was it was quite pricey. But I didn’t care, as long as it took care of my problem. The only thing is, after a bottle ran out, my problem was still there. Instead of buying another bottle, I decided to just drop it. Another pill that I had put all of my hopes into didn’t work. I continued to have a stiff, sore, throbbing right shoulder.
Then something strange happened. I fell in love. I was so deeply in love, I moved out of southern California to live on a horse farm in central Kentucky. I noticed one particular horse that was a big-time athlete, that had been sidelined by a vet due to chronic joint problems. The vet said the horse would probably never compete again. The owner, who had tons of money invested in the horse, decided to give it one last shot using glucosamine. I was interested, but had my doubts due to taking glucosamine myself and having no positive results.
I literally administered the product cosamine to the 1,200-pound beast twice daily, sprinkling the supplement into its food. Without getting into the gory details of it all, since that part of the story is quite frankly pretty boring, the horse had stopped limping within four months. A month or two later, the horse was back working. And within a year, the horse carried its rider to a world championship. The one thing that a horse can’t have that a human is saddled with is the placebo effect. The horse didn’t know it was taking a supplement.
In a conversation with the vet who had given me the supplement to give to the horse, he said glucosamine doesn’t have an immediate effect. It’s a build-up. So once again, I too went back to taking glucosamine for my shoulder, which has absolutely no ligament left in it due to several surgeries. Does it help my shoulder? Well, maybe just a little. I still have severe damage there. Where I see the biggest difference is in my 48-year-old hips, knees and ankles, which are pain free and seem to have the same elasticity I had when I was 12.
As always, I have nothing to sell here. I’m just offering a solution that may help others. If you’re going to try glucosamine, commit to a minimum of three months. Don’t take it from me, take it straight from the horse’s mouth.
