| I'm a repeating molecular unit! |
I was having Sunday dinner with the folks, as I am wont to do, when my mother brought up a conversation she had had with one of my aunts. Aunt C is a dedicated equestrian who has an old, beloved horse that she brings to competitions. So that the old boy might compete without joint pain, she has been giving him oral supplements of hyaluronic acid.
Hyaluronic acid (or hyaluronan) has many different roles in the body, but one of its sexiest roles is as a thickener of the fluid in your joint capsules. If your joint fluid contains adequate hyaluronic acid (HA), you’re less likely to experience that delightful bone-on-bone sensation. When asked if it would be a good idea if my dad were to start taking oral HA, I told her that it probably wouldn’t hurt, provided it didn’t interact badly with the medications in his existing rotation.
The trouble with supplements, however, is that there sometimes isn’t a whole lot of evidence to support taking them. On the surface, it seems sensible for someone who wants to maintain an adequate body level of HA to take HA, but taking a pill containing something doesn’t guarantee that that substance is going to go where it needs to go, especially when it’s a rather large molecule.
When used in osteoarthritis, hyaluronic acid is often given as a shot into the affected joint so that the HA gets right where it needs to go and doesn’t have to be digested and then reassembled. Does it work? Some people say yes, others say no.
While I have some friends who take oral HA and say it’s helped their joint pain, I’m not entirely convinced that the effect is more than psychological. And while I’d love to be able to take an OTC supplement as arthritis prophylaxis, I’m not going to spend money on HA until there’s strong evidence that it works.
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