Preventing Osteoarthritis

But there are ways to prevent osteoarthritis. One simple way you can do it is, first of all, lose some weight. The less weight on the joint, the better the joint will become. If you put 300 pounds on a joint that's only supposed to carry 120 pounds, you're going to eventually wear that joint out. Also, if you do repetitive motions for long periods of time, you'll eventually wear the joints out.

The joint is actually made up of cartilage. Cartilage is a smooth, glistening material, like what we see at the end of a chicken bone. Everyone has peeled a chicken bone off, and they've seen that smooth, glistening cartilage that's actually eight times slicker than ice.

In order to hydrate that cartilage, you've got to have water. Cartilage is made up of about 80 percent water, so we have to have adequate water. You need two quarts of water a day to keep it hydrated, because cartilage doesn't have blood vessels; it depends on the synovial fluid and adequate water intake to keep it nourished.

I used to have an old mitt that I left outside. I left it out there for a month and forgot about it. When I finally saw it, instead of the leather being nice and smooth, it was all cracked from being left outside. That's the same thing that happens to our cartilage when it doesn't have enough water year after year.

To nourish that cartilage, you also need supplements. The most important supplement by far is glucosamine sulfate. Glucosamine sulfate nourishes the proteoglycans that make up the cartilage matrix, and we want to nourish that cartilage to keep it strong.

So you need to lose weight, you need to nourish the cartilage, and you need to exercise. The best exercise for preventing and helping arthritis is not running; it's cycling or swimming or gliding motions, where you don't pound the joint.