Quick Summary: What supplements help rebuild cartilage?
Glucosamine and chondroitin are two supplements that can help rebuild cartilage. Glucosamine (G) 1,500 to 2,000 mg/d and chondroitin sulfate (Cs) 800 to 1,200 mg/d and avocado-soy unsaponifiables (ASU) 300 to 600 mg/d, taken together or alone, are useful as adjunct therapies in cartilage disorders.
What supplements help you rebuild your cartilage?
If you’re suffering from severe joint pain caused by cartilage erosion, then you’re probably willing to try anything to get rid of the ache. The best joint supplements often explicitly promise to help rebuild cartilage. Joint pain stemming from a lack of cartilage – or damaged cartilage – can be extraordinarily unpleasant.
Cartilage is a resilient, smooth, elastic tissue; a rubber-like padding that surrounds and protects the ends of long bones at the joints and nerves. Frequent impacts or repetitive friction can wear this cartilage away, leaving the ends of your bones exposed in the joint. The sensation of these bones rubbing against one another can be excruciatingly painful.
Joint pain caused by a lack of cartilage is quite common. High-impact sports, long-distance road running, manual labor; all of these things can erode cartilage.
This is why so many people are looking for ways to naturally rebuild their cartilage and regain their mobility, not to mention their lives!
So what supplements can you take to help rebuild your cartilage? Is it even possible to rebuild cartilage?
Let’s find out!
Supplements for repairing cartilage
In some cases, such as erosion of articular cartilage, it is not possible to regrow cartilage at all. Treatment for this kind of injury involves stimulating the regeneration of bone underneath the damaged or eroded cartilage.
However, in most cases – particularly in cases of minor cartilage damage – it is possible to stimulate the regrowth and repair of cartilage tissue.
Supplements which can repair cartilage include:
- Glucosamine
- Chondroitin
- MSM
I’ll now go through these substances in a little more detail, explaining how the promote cartilage repair in their own unique ways.
Glucosamine
Glucosamine is an amino sugar and a key structural component of your connective tissues, including cartilage. Cartilage is a kind of matrix, and it is made up of proteoglycans, collagen fibers, elastin, and glycosaminoglycans, for which you need glucosamine. Studies have shown that glucosamine supplementation is correlated with reduced joint pain, greater flexibility, and more robust cartilage production.
Chondroitin
Chondroitin is probably the best supplement to take to protect your cartilage from the kind of damage that eventually leads to joint pain.
Chondroitin weaves itself through the extracellular matrix of cartilage (cartilage being a kind of lattice-like structure). Here it attracts and binds to water molecules. This strengthens and lubricates your cartilage, making it at once stronger and better able to absorb shocks.
What’s even more interesting is that chondroitin supplementation seems to stimulate the production of chondrocyte cells. These are cells which regulate cartilage growth and repair. More chondrocyte cells means better cartilage repair and more cartilage growth, which means healthier joints.
MSM
MSM is a kind of fundamental, base joint supplement. It is a structural component of both glucosamine and chondroitin, as well as collagen and other proteins which together form cartilage. Supplementing with MSM has been shown to preserve cartilage and collagen as well as preventing serious joint pain from connective tissue erosion.
How to use supplements to rebuild cartilage
The best thing you can do for your cartilage is to avoid the kinds of behaviors and lifestyle decisions which erode it; don’t lift weights that are too heavy, avoid high impact sports, steer clear of pro-inflammatory foods, and try not to live a life that is too sedentary.
But for some – if not most – of us, that’s too much to ask. Realistically, we’re going to consume pro-inflammatory foods and alcohol, we’re going to keep lifting weights and playing high-impact sports, and we’re going to keep sitting at our computers for 8 hours a day.
So, the best thing most people can do is use a high quality joint supplement designed to promote cartilage production and preserve cartilage from wear-and-tear. This means using a joint stack which utilizes all of the ingredients above as well as others known to enhance other aspects of joint health.