The Amazing Joint Supplement You Wish You Had Known Sooner

Looking for a joint supplement that works? Look no further.

What is common to jello, gummy candy and head cheese? … read on to find out!

Have you heard of head cheese? Well I had not, till a few years back on a winter evening, my husband staying true to his Eastern European upbringing, opened a pack of head cheese (yes that is what it is called). What does head cheese do to your joints? Keep reading…

If some one told you it felt like your joints were working on a 60 year old model while you were only 33 years old, I could relate to it without even batting an eye. At least that is how I felt my body was falling apart then.

Two back to back pregnancies about a year apart, a 30 lb weight gain during the second pregnancy and a relatively active lifestyle prior to that had probably taken their toll on my knees. Finally it was here: in 2015 I had a meniscal tear on my right knee!

Much as I was told it may need surgery, I tried to put it off as much as I could. Being a physician myself did not help me heed that surgical advise any, since I was also a single mom to a two year old boy. His world depended on me. My nearest family was in New Jersey and the next in Canada, with a whole lot of dear family farther across the globe. The risks of surgery weighed far too heavy than continuing to make a living with the pain.

You could never tell when my knee would buckle and give away, but the burning pain inside the knee was easier to manage whenever it happened than the instability, so an umbrella is what came to the rescue (as a crutch). I have to say it was sometimes embarassing, limping into the clinic propping myself with a long umbrella on my right side, only to deliver arthritis advise to an elderly patient a few minutes later, who seemed to be able to walk better than I could.

Let me take you back a few years to see what happened.

I had moved to that city just about three years before that date, for work. It may have been a fateful move too: I moved there when I was 8 months pregnant with my first, right after surviving the 80 hour work weeks of residency in a pregnant state. Well I had no choice but to move at that stage to a medically underserved area, for immigration purposes. It was either start working there or leave to my country of birth for two years before re-entering the US. We chose the shorter move. But much to our dismay, I ended up losing that baby during a scheduled induction delivery about two months later.

To a good extent it was reminiscent of my father, a physician himself, passing away in 2006 under circumstances that just wildly spiraled out of our control. We could only watch as what others would have effortlessly gotten through, just turned into a horrendous mishap one step after another.

Then in a benevolent turn of fate, we fell pregnant with my little one about five months later!

On the brighter side, I like to say I lost my father and a son within 6 years of each other and the next year, by God’s grace, I got back a son who looked like my father.

But that’s also when the pounds started mounding. I may have had low vitamin D as well in the pregnancy. That thought occurred to me only when I got a very bad spell of back muscle spasm in my second trimester that literally took me down instantly: I heard a pop in my lower back, and just fell down on my hiny (I could not hold myself up due to pain/ spasm) – and I had always prided myself on my pain tolerance.

I could not move a muscle from there: any simple turn of the neck even could get me terrible spams. How I wished we had telemedicine then: there I was on the floor, wondering if I needed to call 911 to get me off the floor, and out of the house to get to the doctor’s office even. I am so grateful that phase is behind us.

It took me a good week to come out of it, and of course I did not dare touch a muscle relaxant for the sake of my precious pregnancy.

Like a good doctor- patient, I did not get my Vitamin D levels checked, much as my heart kept telling me to check it – it was yet not a mainstream medical investigation then. Eventually I did get it checked, after having the lovely little one by God’s grace – only to confirm my suspicion!

Does emotional stress affect the joints? Maybe. In my case it may have been more a physical effect.

Modifying my walk to put less weight on the right knee and believe it or not, using a knee brace (which also modified my walk) led to my quads (the chunk of muscles on the front of the thigh) weakening a little. This reduced the shock absorption effects those muscles provided. So smaller intensity of activities could hurt the knees easier.

Add in low vitamin D and weight gain with pregnancy to the mix and what do we have – a great recipe for joint deterioration.

Physical therapy following the surgery helped: but in the immediate few months, it helped more with stretching the muscles than strengthening them. So normal activities like trying to go up a stair bearing weight on my right knee, would sometimes cause pain in the bone almost close to where it hurt when the meniscus was torn. And I did not want to risk tearing it again. So what was one to do!

Then it was time to move again, for work reasons of course! The previous clinic was closing down and I faced the same perilous verdict: I had to choose between finding another employer as soon as possible or leave to my country of birth. On top of it, I was going through a divorce, and soaking up fresh responsibilities as a single parent.

It did not help that the official paperwork for such transfer usually took three months. Nor the fact that I did not have as much of a home base in my country of birth as I had before my father’s demise, also having spent a good portion of my life here by then. But most important of all was doing what was best for my son.

So about three months after my surgery in 2015, I moved back with my son to Atlanta, my home-base, for work reasons. I am grateful to God that things lined up right on time for that job transition to happen.

However this meant the healthcare provider set up I had earlier was out of my reach. But I continued my therapy exercises at home as much as my little one would let me.

Exercise was almost out of my reach as even simple activities like walking was a small ordeal, with a slight limp. Random knee positions during the walk would be uncomfortable. As I had kept the knee kind of straight those few months, extreme flexion (bending) was difficult too. Typically, those with knee pain have to resort to non-impact exercises like biking or swimming.

With reduced shock absorption and limited range of motion, riding a bike or even running after my toddler was almost impossible. And I did not know how to swim. But it still led me to the water.

Which is also when I discovered water walking. More on that later.

Around the same time, my mother started noticing the beginnings of arthritis in her own knees. This gave us a way to explore it together. We put several joint supplements to the test: ‘Move-free’, ‘Osteobiflex’ to name a few. My mother found Osteobiflex a little more helpful than the former.

Despite paying attention to my diet, water intake and activity levels, my right knee would randomly hurt, especially if I used the stairs or if the weather was cold.

So fast fwd a few yrs…..I met my wonderful husband and one winter evening, true to his Eastern European upbringing, he opens this pack of head-cheese to have with dinner. That week my knee had been hurting from using the one set of stairs at home.

Interestingly the next two days my knees did not hurt though I used the same stairs. The only new thing I noticed was using the head-cheese.

A few weeks later, we happened to use head cheese again, and it was a random knee-pain day. Again my knees stopped hurting the next two days.

That’s when it occurred to me: the only difference in my lifestyle leading to the pain free days was using head-cheese. This made me stop to look at the ingredients of head-cheese.

According to the wikipedia:

Head cheese or brawn is a cold cut that originated in Europe. A version pickled with vinegar is known as souse. Head cheese is not a dairy cheese, but a terrine or meat jelly often made with flesh from the head of a calf or pig, or less commonly a sheep or cow, and often set in aspic.

What we had at home looked like the picture above except it was a circular slab instead of a rectangle.

The texture feels like pork/ meat pieces trapped in a gelatinous medium kind of like resin art. This reminded me of the material that sets like a jelly around chicken when you make a curry / chicken stock with whole chicken and let it cool down.

Further research found that this material has gelatin in it from the animal bones and cartilage.

So I went on an adventure into organic gelatin. Yes it had to be organically sourced and easily available.

My day was busily packed between commute, work, my child’s needs, child’s school, healthy food on the table, appointments, bills and deadlines, besides regular family time.

So it had to be available where I did not have to go hunting half a day for it. Naturally, I landed upon Great Lakes Gelatin from amazon.

Since then I have been an almost daily user of gelatin and my knees live to tell the tale. I am no longer using the commercial joint supplements.

There are many ways to use gelatin for this:

1. My favorite/ easiest way: with my morning beverage; I use 1 Tbsp gelatin per 8 oz of hot beverage (milk/ tea/ coffee are all compatible): you may want to add it to half a cup of the beverage first, briskly stirring it in all the while to avoid clumping. Let’s make sure this is done while the beverage is at its hottest. Then let it sit for about 5 minutes, adding the remaining hot beverage after that. Your new joint supplement is ready for consumption!!
2. Additives in food: gelatin, jello etc.

Hope gelatin helps you and yours in more ways than one. Here’s to healthy joints!!