Workers in Sweden just published a study where they fed a joint supplement containing all three of the popular supplements.
SPOILER NOTE: If three things don’t work individually, they don’t work better when you combine them.
And one of the great things about the study was that they fed the horses the stuff for three months, which, if you’re really going to try to make an assessment, is an awfully good idea. I mean, if products that are supposed to “support” or “protect” or do something wonderful to or for joints and joint cartilage really do something, you’d think that it would show up in three months, right?
They were very thorough.
They compared the horses that had been getting the holy trinity of joint supplements to the horses who got nothing. And here’s what they found.
In one group, knee flexion measurements and fore fetlock extension measurements were significantly increased. Unfortunately, insofar as the supplement goes, that group was the control group.
Yeah, that’s right, the only improvement that was measured was in the horses that didn’t get anything.
ADVERTISERS, PLEASE NOTE: You can now truthfully say that when it comes to giving some joint supplement to an old horse, “Nothing is better than the supplement.” Just don’t ask anyone to think too hard about that statement.
If you’ve been paying any attention, this really shouldn’t be a surprise. It was mid-2913 that a class-action suit was settled by a couple of major companies for making false claims (CLICK HERE to see my article). And there are all sorts of biological reasons to believe that the products just can’t work in horses (CLICK HERE to see another article that I wrote on the subject). As time has passed, the evidence that glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate doesn’t really help with – well, anything – is really starting to pile up.
And the products still sell like hotcakes.
To end on a more sobering note, I really don’t think that any of this information matters to those that are making a handsome living selling glucosamine, etc., to those that are getting money for advertising the products, to those that are getting sponsorships, etc. I don’t think that the companies care one bit, either. When I did my study in 2011 that showed that 5 popular vitamin and mineral supplements didn’t appear to be made with any concern at all about what the horse actually needs (CLICK HERE to see it). When the Wall Street Journal published an article in 2011, called, “Is This the End of Popping Vitamins?” it quoted the CEO of GNC (the big supplement selling company) as saying, “The thing you do with [reports of studies] is just ride them out, and literally we see no impact on our business.” Apparently, negative studies don’t affect sales, mostly because people will believe what they want to believe.
And you’ll save some money, too. Win: win, unless you’re in the business.