[Dana King, professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine at West Virginia University] and his research partner, Jun Xiang — a WVU health data analyst — assessed data from 16,686 adults who completed the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2010. All of the participants were at least 40 years old. King and Xiang merged these data with 2015 mortality figures.
After controlling for various factors — such as participants’ age, sex, smoking status and activity level — the researchers found that taking glucosamine/chondroitin every day for a year or longer was associated with a 39 percent reduction in all-cause mortality.
It was also linked to a 65 percent reduction in cardiovascular-related deaths. That’s a category that includes deaths from stroke, coronary artery disease and heart disease, the United States’ biggest killer.
“Once we took everything into account, the impact was pretty significant,” King said.
The results appear in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
“A 39 percent reduction in all cause mortality?” This is be the biggest news in history!
Eh? What’s that? Oh. So everyone still dies? Maybe they should mention that.
Jesus ‘effing Christ… Here we go again.
Somebody needs to start tattooing the phrase “correlation does not equal causation” on all these stupid bastards eyelids, in bright neon letters so that they can see them and read them when they have their eyes closed.
Every time you go and look at these things, what you find is a credulous lack of actual thought in the interpretation and design of these so-called “studies”. This one is typical–They looked at self-reported data from a survey. No thought given to the potential that people, y’know, lied when taking the survey, or that what they might have reported were things that were more aspirational than real. Good God, but I know people who’ve insisted for years that they take their medications that they’re supposed to, and you go look in their kitchens and bathrooms only to find that a.) they’ve not actually been taking the meds, and b.) that they haven’t even been getting the damn prescriptions filled consistently. Yet, what they tell their doctors and anyone else who asks is “Yes, of course I take my medications on the schedule you gave me…”. One guy I know gets his prescriptions filled just to keep his doctor and his daughter off of his ass, and then never actually takes any of his meds at all.
So, yeah, sure… Everyone takes their nutritional supplements exactly as they report. Sure they do.
Then, there’s the other little problem–Even if they are telling the survey people the truth about what they really do, there in the dark, the question arises about causality: Is it just remotely possible that the sort of person who seeks out and takes a nutritional supplement like glucosamine is more likely to be the sort of person who is less prone to heart disease and all the rest of the “effects” they observe in this bit of scholarship?
These people are idiots with credentials, ones that can’t even think their way out of a paper bag. My guess would be that someone in the nutritional supplement industry is underwriting their work, because this certainly isn’t what I’d call “basic research”. What, pray tell, is the mechanism by which glucosamine accomplishes these miracles? How does it work, to serve as a panacea for all these ills?
Modern “science” is mostly bullshit, more sciencism than it is actual science. There may be something to this, but I’ll be damned if I am going to buy into the bullshit this set of idiots has come up with, because there is certainly a very limited sort of “science” behind it all.
I’d be willing to accept a study like this, if they were to either send people out into the homes of the survey subjects and then actually, y’know, do some fucking science by observing what they’re really doing, in terms of taking those supplements. The other thing I would wholeheartedly accept is if there was one little phrase in their results, one like “…there appears to be a high correlation between self-reported glucosamine use with lower rates of these health issues…”, instead of the certain pronouncements they’re making about it all. Which sound like advertisements for the glucosamine supplement industry, to be quite frank.
‘As is common with heavily promoted dietary supplements, the claimed benefits of glucosamine are based principally on clinical and laboratory studies. Clinical studies on glucosamine efficacy are divided, with some reporting relief from arthritic pain and stiffness, while higher quality studies report no benefit above placebo.[3][10][9][11]‘ says Wiki.
I just bought some anyway.
MSM is very effective for the joint inflammation disease I have. It’s roughly 50% as effective as hydrocodone, with no unwanted side effects.
In my enthusiasm I bought bottles and gave them to friends and acquaintances with joint problems or arthritis. A couple of them, it did nothing. Others got “severe gastric distress.” None of them had the kind of pain relief I get.
Some of the same friends have reported good results with glucosamine. It does nothing for me either way.
I keep a log of meds, activity, and things related to various health issues. It’s a bit tedious, but it has been quite useful.
“I’d be willing to accept a study like this, if they were to either send people out into the homes of the survey subjects and then actually, y’know, do some fucking science by observing what they’re really doing,”
That’s ridiculous. They’d need grant money, and a sponsor, and it would take time better spent in writing more bullshit papers to submit to bullshit journals.
You’re sadly out of date in how SCIENCE! is practiced nowadays.
What’s with the seeming surge of recent of fear of death?
So many looking to eek out just a few more good years, thinking that’ll make their life complete, and add relevance, or meaning.
Rather than living life to the fullest now, and every day.
Everywhere I look I see people so absolutely scared of death that they’re refusing to live.
Death is a perfectly natural part of life.
All life feeds on death.
All new forms of matter are made of the atoms of previous forms of matter, since decayed back to atoms.
Awaiting new life.
You don’t miss wake when sleeping, do you?
How can one possible miss life in death?
Even most those claiming to believe in an afterlife, often portrayed as a glorious existence, take every measure possible to extend their life on earth.
So many people have so little problem constantly shoveling absolute garbage into their bodies, even regular food is not only not very nutritious anymore but even toxic, that they need often chemical/synthetic supplements to make up for the deficiencies.
It’s often claimed/believed that Glucosamine is
derived naturally, but labs are creating most.
As is the case for most vitamins today.
Especially those used to “fortify” those highly-deficient foods we’re growing on the cheap, so that corporate America can accumulate & hoard ever-more billions & trillions.
We’re pimping supplements in attempt to reduce cardiovascular-related deaths, but we’re dumping more & more sewage sludge on farm & crop lands.
Ingesting more toxins (forever chemicals that are going down drains) and destroying the microbes that promote natural health.
Don’t use your brains & do things right for your body in the first place…..we’re working on a pill for that.
What the world really needs is more broken & corrupted healthcare.
TRX,
Yeah, I’m behind the times in a lot of respects. I get that from people an awful lot. Apparently, I’m expecting too much when I ask people to think for themselves and actually do some critical thinking about what they’re hearing or seeing.