Coach Bentz
10-25-2006, 12:49 PM
When I had a massage practice, I had the great opportunity to work side by side with excellent chiropractors on cases of chronic pain. Inevitably there would be folks with achy joints (and I was one of them by that time), and the question always came up, is there anything I can take for them?
The standard answer to that question was glucosamine, and chondroitin. Even the local drug stores were selling those in combination by that time. I was taking it like everybody else, at least when I remembered to. I've never been a big fan of taking pills, but this was one I thought little about.
At least until I took a long trip, and spent a week with a friend of mine, who is a master bowyer and as interested in wild edible plants and bodyworking as I am. The discussion at dinner eventually came around to joint health (this was a few months prior to finding CST) and glucosamine.
I remember him looking up at me and saying "Well, you can buy that (referring to the pills), or you can start eating this" and holding up his chicken bone, pointing to the end of the bone, where the cartilage was. I was slightly embarrassed that I didn't even know that part was edible. I had always assumed from the way my family ate that the flesh was the edible part. He didn't explain to me why, but later that week, my friend also spent time introducing me - with some reluctance on my part - to edible insects.
I didn't dig too much deeper than that at the time, although, I did begin the practice of chewing up the ends of the chicken bones I ate. Eventually, I started breaking them and getting at the marrow (when I remembered a Norse myth about that, and being taught that the Native Americans would waste no part of the animal). Lately, as I've been experimenting with lamb, I've also started eating tendon and the periosteum, the connective tissue layer that surrounds the bone.
Yesterday, someone else brought up the topic, and I decided to do a little digging into the matter, what glucosamine and chondroitin actually was.
From University of Maryland Medical Center website (http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ConsSupplements/Glucosaminecs.html)
Dietary Sources
There are no food sources of glucosamine. Supplements are derived from either bovine cartilage or chitin, the hard outer shells of shrimp, lobsters, and crabs.
For chondroitin (OA refers to osteoarthritis) from UMM (http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ConsSupplements/Chondroitincs.html) also
Dietary Sources
The use of chondroitin as a therapy for OA (and other conditions) requires dietary supplements because the precise amount of chondroitin in foods is unknown. Meats with visible connective tissue may be sources of chondroitin, but the exact quantity of chondroitin present in such foods is unknown.
In another article (http://www.activexamerica.com/chondroitin.php), its mentioned that cow trachea and shark fin cartilage are used make both products.
To start finding vegetarian sources, I had to dig a little deeper (http://finch.customer.netspace.net.au/skep...rgos/dec03.html) into an Aussie website. But you'll notice that we're now back to insects (if you noticed, we already were, it was disguised in the word 'chitin' above)
So what in our diet is rich in glucosamine and do we really need to take pills of the stuff? Well cartilage is for starters. Those soups made from the skin of any animal, chicken carcasses, bacon knuckles, fish bones, shark fin or birds' nests (the ones stuck together by the bird's saliva). For vegetarians, diets rich in the cell walls of fungi (mushrooms, yeast) or the yeast or bacteria in fermented products such as Vegemite, home brewed beer, Soy tempeh or yoghurt would be a useful source. The exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans are mainly glucosamine derivatives; so prawn shell soup, chocolate-coated ants, locusts in honey, Bogong moth fry-up or witchetty grub shashlik should be on your summer menu. [Commercial D-glucosamine is derived from crab and prawn shells -- ’ so beware if you are allergic to either; but there is a version made from corn syrup by fermentation with a genetically engineered microbe]. So, if your diet is high in D-glucosamine, will this help your OA?
Interesting menu options, for sure :) but it also brings up the possibility that fermented foods may also provide a means for the vegetarian seeking these ingredients in their diet.
Rather than judge any source of these ingredients, my intention is only to share this information in the light it was shared with me... that there are options. We may be overlooking and discarding the very nutrition we're seeking elsewhere.
Personally, I'm going to continue on the track I have been, for only the fact that I'm not sure I would sit down and eat a crab or lobster shell at a meal. Until I can chew one up, I'm not sure I want to pass a ground up one directly into my stomach.
Bon appetit!
The standard answer to that question was glucosamine, and chondroitin. Even the local drug stores were selling those in combination by that time. I was taking it like everybody else, at least when I remembered to. I've never been a big fan of taking pills, but this was one I thought little about.
At least until I took a long trip, and spent a week with a friend of mine, who is a master bowyer and as interested in wild edible plants and bodyworking as I am. The discussion at dinner eventually came around to joint health (this was a few months prior to finding CST) and glucosamine.
I remember him looking up at me and saying "Well, you can buy that (referring to the pills), or you can start eating this" and holding up his chicken bone, pointing to the end of the bone, where the cartilage was. I was slightly embarrassed that I didn't even know that part was edible. I had always assumed from the way my family ate that the flesh was the edible part. He didn't explain to me why, but later that week, my friend also spent time introducing me - with some reluctance on my part - to edible insects.
I didn't dig too much deeper than that at the time, although, I did begin the practice of chewing up the ends of the chicken bones I ate. Eventually, I started breaking them and getting at the marrow (when I remembered a Norse myth about that, and being taught that the Native Americans would waste no part of the animal). Lately, as I've been experimenting with lamb, I've also started eating tendon and the periosteum, the connective tissue layer that surrounds the bone.
Yesterday, someone else brought up the topic, and I decided to do a little digging into the matter, what glucosamine and chondroitin actually was.
From University of Maryland Medical Center website (http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ConsSupplements/Glucosaminecs.html)
Dietary Sources
There are no food sources of glucosamine. Supplements are derived from either bovine cartilage or chitin, the hard outer shells of shrimp, lobsters, and crabs.
For chondroitin (OA refers to osteoarthritis) from UMM (http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ConsSupplements/Chondroitincs.html) also
Dietary Sources
The use of chondroitin as a therapy for OA (and other conditions) requires dietary supplements because the precise amount of chondroitin in foods is unknown. Meats with visible connective tissue may be sources of chondroitin, but the exact quantity of chondroitin present in such foods is unknown.
In another article (http://www.activexamerica.com/chondroitin.php), its mentioned that cow trachea and shark fin cartilage are used make both products.
To start finding vegetarian sources, I had to dig a little deeper (http://finch.customer.netspace.net.au/skep...rgos/dec03.html) into an Aussie website. But you'll notice that we're now back to insects (if you noticed, we already were, it was disguised in the word 'chitin' above)
So what in our diet is rich in glucosamine and do we really need to take pills of the stuff? Well cartilage is for starters. Those soups made from the skin of any animal, chicken carcasses, bacon knuckles, fish bones, shark fin or birds' nests (the ones stuck together by the bird's saliva). For vegetarians, diets rich in the cell walls of fungi (mushrooms, yeast) or the yeast or bacteria in fermented products such as Vegemite, home brewed beer, Soy tempeh or yoghurt would be a useful source. The exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans are mainly glucosamine derivatives; so prawn shell soup, chocolate-coated ants, locusts in honey, Bogong moth fry-up or witchetty grub shashlik should be on your summer menu. [Commercial D-glucosamine is derived from crab and prawn shells -- ’ so beware if you are allergic to either; but there is a version made from corn syrup by fermentation with a genetically engineered microbe]. So, if your diet is high in D-glucosamine, will this help your OA?
Interesting menu options, for sure :) but it also brings up the possibility that fermented foods may also provide a means for the vegetarian seeking these ingredients in their diet.
Rather than judge any source of these ingredients, my intention is only to share this information in the light it was shared with me... that there are options. We may be overlooking and discarding the very nutrition we're seeking elsewhere.
Personally, I'm going to continue on the track I have been, for only the fact that I'm not sure I would sit down and eat a crab or lobster shell at a meal. Until I can chew one up, I'm not sure I want to pass a ground up one directly into my stomach.
Bon appetit!