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Here's some information that you won't find anywhere in the medical literature. And although I'm only basing this claim on statistics derived from a trial cohort of only 1 (
), I'm reasonably confident that the information is valid. Here's the background information:For approximately 14 years I took glucosamine sulphate (with chondroitin). I started taking it because I was having knee problems and I was subjecting my knees (and the rest of my body) to almost daily heavy, repetitive load-bearing work, stacking 50 lb. bags of corn on wooden pallets, 1 ton (40 bags) per pallet. This was part of my corn-processing business and we worked long days, and 7-day weeks, back in those days. All the older workers I knew who did such work, had pretty much destroyed their knees and hips by the time they reached middle age (and I was already at middle age at this point), and many/most of those older workers could barely hobble around, let alone continue to work.
The glucosamine worked like a charm, and today I give it credit for preserving my knees and hips. A surprising number of the folks with whom I went to high school have either already had knee or hip replacements, or they are planning such a procedure, or they are dreading the day when they will inevitably have to cave in and have it done, if they hope to continue to be able to walk. And most of them had office jobs. By contrast, my knees and hips are in great condition. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I doubt that.
But here's the reason for this post:
As I have aged, I have done progressively less of that load-bearing work, and a little over a year ago, I stopped doing it altogether. Roughly a year ago, I started noticing that when I would wake up in the mornings occasionally I would be unable to fold one or more of my fingers into a fist. Sometimes only one hand would be involved, and at other times both hands would have the problem. Usually, it was only one finger per hand. Sometimes I would wake up during the night, with hand pain, because I apparently had tried to fold my fingers while I was sleeping, and the pain awakened me.
The problem seemed to be a nodule on the extensor tendons (on the backs of the fingers) in the proximal phalange portion of the fingers (the section nearest the hand). IOW, the perceived nodule would not pass through the ligament passageway at the joint between the proximal and intermediate phalanges, thus preventing the intermediate phalange of the finger from properly closing toward the palm. I was afraid to force movement, since I didn't want to tear a ligament — that would be a bummer for sure. If I repeatedly flexed the finger, though, eventually it would relent, and I would be able to fold the finger. If I didn't keep my hand clinched, though, sometimes it would happen again, the next time I tried to fold my fingers. Usually, during the daytime, it was never a problem, because normal use prevented the problem from redeveloping. Basically, the problem appeared to be that while I was sleeping, nodules were forming on those ligaments.
A few years earlier (when I was taking a statin), I had a similar problem in that I would wake up with completely stiff fingers, that I couldn't fold down. IOW, they were rigid. I'm not sure if this was a joint problem or a ligament problem, but it appeared to be a (stiff) joint problem. This was a different problem — they were frozen in position, and I had to physically fold them down with the other hand, in order to move them. But in that situation, I never noticed any effects that would have been caused by nodules on ligaments, so I don't believe any nodules existed. At any rate, I stopped taking the statin, and after a few weeks, that problem completely resolved.
I can't rule out the possibility that the use of a statin (for roughly 9 months) might have contributed to the nodule problem that developed later, but I stopped taking the statin almost 2 years before I began to notice the ligament/nodule problem.
So here's how I solved the mystery:
Monique mentioned to me that she was beginning to suspect that the glucosamine sulphate she was taking might be causing at least some of her GI symptoms. And as she later posted on the board, discontinuing the use of the glucosamine did indeed seem to help. So that brought glucosamine up on my radar, and I began to wonder about it in my own situation. On February 2, I stopped taking glucosamine sulphate, and low and behold, after about a week, I seemed to be free of the problem with nodules on ligaments.
Here we are several weeks later, and the problem has not returned, so I have to conclude that long-term use of glucosamine sulphate was at least a major part of the cause of this unusual (medically undocumented, as far as I can tell) problem. So thank you glucosamine sulphate, for saving my knees and hips, and thank you Monique, for saving me from the glucosamine sulphate.
Love,
Tex
Now that you mention it, I can remember learning to knit when I was a kid. I can't remember ever actually finishing any knitting project, though.