BOSTON — Suddenly hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of Americans with arthritis are taking a combination of obscure nutritional supplements. Whatever made these pills the cure du jour, it's certainly not the way their names roll off the tongue.
Glucosamine sulfate and chondroitin sulfate. Hard to imagine marketing whizzes brainstorming that, isn't it?
It's also not because a lot of arthritis specialists are pushing them on their patients. Mention health store pills to most doctors, and the response is likely to fall somewhere between a blank look and a condescending smile.
The real reasons, it seems, are a cleverly titled book, a hard-to-treat disease that afflicts 16 million Americans and that most elusive and powerful of marketing forces, a good buzz on the street. Or the golf course. Or wherever else men and women of a certain age gather and talk about what's aching them.
Across the country, folks have seized on these over-the-counter pills as a new way to ease throbbing knees and hands, although the opinion of the medical establishment is, to put it politely, skeptical. Just how many of these people are truly finding relief is impossible to say, but clearly the experience has made believers of some.
Among them is Ralph Cushman, 49, a real estate lawyer in Anchorage, Alaska. Cushman is the kind of guy who lives to hike and fish. Those pleasures gradually grew difficult as old injuries stiffened his knees with arthritis, making walking painful. On a hunting trip two years ago, he got 500 feet up a mountain and could go no farther.
"It was heartbreaking," he recalled. "Suddenly, I couldn't deer hunt anymore. All the things I lived for were slipping away."
His doctor told him nothing could be done. Take pain pills and live with it. Cushman limped to a bookstore. There he found something that, in his mind, changed his life.
"The Arthritis Cure," written by Dr. Jason Theodosakis, lays out a program of exercise, diet and glucosamine and chondroitin. The book has sold more than 1.4 million copies since it came out last year.
Cushman followed its directions. "Within days, I realized it was making a tremendous difference," he said. "Suddenly I could out-hike my boys rather than hollering for them to wait. There was just no question this was working. I assure you, you cannot make that kind of pain go away with a placebo."
