Interviewer: A lot of athletes take chondroitin, Glucosamine and MSM for their joints. That's the most common joint supplement that people take. What are your thoughts on that and why do you think that's so?
Dr. Stern: My new formula that I'm coming out with does not have chondroitin, it does not have glucosamine and it does not have MSM. This is the reason why.
MSM is a great nutrient, I have no problem with MSM as it reduces inflammation.
Here's the thing, though.
If you're going to do a complex nutrient, MSM shouldn't be in there. When I started my own supplement company, the reason I did it is I wanted to make the best nutrients available for my patients, for people around the country, for my family, for athletes, for basically everybody.
Athletes, specifically, if you're going to take MSM, you need about two to three grams a day for it to be an effective dose. The maximum amount you can put in capsule of anything is about 750 milligrams.
So right off the bat, if I'm doing a complex nutrient to support tendon and ligament health and I wanna use MSM, most formulas are gonna have 500 milligrams or 200 milligrams or 700 milligrams. It's not nearly enough. So if I just put MSM in there, I'm just putting it in there to say to someone, hey, there's MSM in my product.
It's not really gonna have tremendous anti-inflammatory benefits.
When it comes to chondroitin and glucosamine, I'm not a big fan of the sourcing of those two nutrients. Personally, I don't know about the shellfish that they use to get these two ingredients. And if they're using a non-shellfish variety, they're usually getting it from corn and then again, I'm not a big fan or corn because corn processing might not be healthy either.
My rule of thumb when I started making supplements is I do not want to give something to your body which may be beneficial, but which also may be harmful as well. So that's why I'm not using glucosamine in my product or chondroitin.
There are other things you can do to support cartilage health, to strengthen tendons and ligaments and I'm choosing to use those things, such as hyaluronic acid, mumio, and silica.
Those are three really amazing nutrients that will help tendon and ligament health, help support cartilage health and not have the possible negative issues that those other three things would give. It's not really a negative issue, but more just an ethical issue of not giving them something that just isn't gonna be enough for them to see benefits.
Interviewer: Appreciate it.