3 Lifestyle Tips & 4 Supplements for Joint Health
By Nutritional Weight & Wellness Staff
May 4, 2021
You’re not alone if spring brings along the enjoyable proverbial spring in your step … but what if that step also brings along some knee pain? Or if not your knees, is your hip is reacting? Perhaps in your case it’s shoulder pain. Wherever the joint pain, we can help with our number one recommendation for relief … nutrition to reduce inflammation, along with four supplements we recommend to our clients again and again.
3 Tips to Reduce Inflammation (In Turn Reducing Joint Pain)
Skip Sugar: Sugar and inflammation are directly related, no way around it. If you want your joints to feel better, sugar has to go. One client used an apt metaphor: noticing when she eats sugar, she gets “that shards of glass feeling” in her knee. After diligently cutting out sugar, her “shards of glass pain” is a thing of the past.
Choose Healthy Fats: Fat lubricates joints, helping with joint pain. Choosing the right kind of fats is key. Avocado, raw or dry roasted nuts, olives, olive oil, butter, avocado oil and coconut oil are all healthy choices. Refined oils such as canola, corn, vegetable, soybean, and cottonseed oil are heavily processed, don’t provide much if any nutrient value and promote inflammation. Getting a serving of healthy fats each time you eat also helps to stabilize blood sugar, which will help to prevent those pesky cravings.
Replace Processed Carbohydrates with Vegetables: Simply put, processed carbs = inflammation. Cereal, bread, pasta, crackers, baked goods are all considered processed carbohydrates. (Processed foods like these break down into sugar in your body … are you noticing a theme?) Basically, anything that doesn’t come from the ground, a bush or a tree is considered processed. Yes, vegetables are carbs too but they provide a wide variety of nutrients and antioxidants helping to reduce inflammation. Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, Brussel sprouts) specifically contain sulforaphane. A study found that sulforaphane slows down the destruction of cartilage in joints associated with painful and often debilitating osteoarthritis1. Plus, cruciferous veggies aid in detoxification.
Supplements for Joint Pain
Once you’re consistently crossing these three goals off your list everyday but are still experiencing painful joint pain, that’s when supplements may help. Read on to see which may be right for you – Key Collagen, Joint Revive, Curcumin 400.
Key Collagen
Collagen is an important building block in many different areas of your body. It’s difficult to get enough collagen from food alone and your production of collagen starts to reduce in your twenties. Key Collagen is superior to the majority of collagen products on the market, because it’s cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practices certified) and contains TendoForte®, Fortigel®, Verisol® and Fortibone®. Not only does Key Collagen give you a boost of collagen, but these four Bioactive Collagen Peptides® also help to stimulate your body’s own collagen production and they each target different areas of the body making it extremely effective. Just 1 scoop of Key Collagen a day can help improve your ligaments/tendons, joint health, skin, hair and nails and bone health. The real star for joint health is the Fortigel for promoting growth of new cartilage. Interestingly, a study done on animals found that the ingestion of Fortigel® stimulated an increase of cartilage tissue growth after just three months. (Just check out some of the great reviews of relief from bone spurs, cartilage loss and more!) As an added bonus, you can expect noticeably firmer and smoother skin with fewer wrinkles. The skin surface structure also improves which reduces cellulite and speeds up nail growth. (Take 1 scoop daily with water, in coffee or in a smoothie.)
New! Curcumin400
Curcumin, a key curcuminoid found in turmeric, is a very powerful anti-inflammatory. The turmeric root has been used throughout Asia for thousands of years for it’s health benefits. It’s important to note not all curcumin products are created equally, as many are not well absorbed. Nutrikey’s Curcumin 400 features an innovative BioCurc®—a patented ingredient that has been shown in clinical studies to surpass the bioavailability (meaning your body can actually use it!) of virtually every other curcumin/turmeric extract product on the market.2 In fact, 400 mg of BioCurc® is equal to 2,000,000 mg of turmeric and 45,000 mg of 95% curcumin extracts.2 Other benefits of curcumin, which is an antioxidant, include: immune support, helps maintain healthy blood sugar, helps maintain healthy blood lipids, aids in digestive function and helps with detoxification. It can work wonders for pain and inflammation, so much so that some of our clients notice if they miss just a day of taking their curcumin. (Take 1-2 caps each day.)
Joint Revive
Joint Revive is specifically designed to help with joint pain. Currently there are about 700,000 knee replacements each year … that’s a lot of surgeries. When you have to replace knees, that typically means that bone is rubbing on bone, which can be extremely painful. That’s where Joint Revive really shines. It has undenatured type II collagen, which stops the degeneration of the joints. We recommend taking two tablets per day until you see some effects, and then reduce it to one per a day. The research has shown that you’ll generally see some results within 30 days, but the best overall effects are going to be over a period of 120 days. So be sure to commit to four months. (Take 1-2 tablets per day.)
Glucosamine Chondroitin Complex with MSM (Works Great in Unison with Key Collagen!)
We’d be remiss without mentioning Glucosamine Chondroitin Complex with MSM as it has helped so many of our clients over the years. Glucosamine and Chondroitin are structural components of cartilage, the tissue that cushions the joints. Both are produced naturally in the body. Glucosamine and chondroitin supplements are helpful to support healthy cartilage formation and joint comfort by promoting cartilage strength and resilience, something that also decreases as we age. To get the best benefit from it you usually need to have 1500 mg of quality glucosamine to work (be warned that drugstore varieties are usually useless to your body!). Our nutritionists recommend taking Glucosamine Chondroitin Complex with MSM for a minimum of three months; they’ve seen some clients start to see relief within one week, but expect to take it for at least six weeks to help regenerate the lost cartilage. This product pairs great with Key Collagen, which also has a peptide that regenerates cartilage too, so taking these both together would be great.
If you’re suffering from chronic joint pain and this all sounds overwhelming , we encourage you to consider making a virtual appointment with one of our nutritionists or dietitians. It often takes some detective work to come up with the right eating plan and combination of supplements to help reduce your specific inflammation and heal the tissues throughout your body. We’d love to help you get back to feeling good, no matter the activity!
For more information on joint health, check out these resources:
- Listen: Helpful Supplements for Joint Pain
- Inspire: “My shoulder pain, which was my greatest discomfort, is also gone. In fact, my joints feel better all over. I was able to play softball again this past summer (with my shoulder pain, I couldn’t throw a ball). My ability to sleep is much better—no more waking up in the middle of the night due to my shoulder pain.” – Jeff’s Story
- Read: 4 Signs Your Body Could Benefit from Collagen
Resources:
- Rose K Davidson, Orla Jupp, Rachel de Ferrars, Colin D Kay, Kirsty L Culley, Rosemary Norton, Clare Driscoll, Tonia L Vincent, Simon T Donell, Yongping Bao, Ian M Clark. Sulforaphane represses matrix-degrading proteases and protects cartilage from destruction in vitro and in vivo. Arthritis & Rheumatism, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/art.38133
- Stohs, S. J., Ji, J., Bucci, L. R., & Preuss, H. G. (2018). A Comparative Pharmacokinetic Assessment of a Novel Highly Bioavailable Curcumin Formulation with 95% Curcumin: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Crossover Study. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 37(1), 51-59.
