You want to start your pet on a glucosamine and chondroitin supplement to help your pet’s joints, you can just pick up one at the pet store right? Not so fast. You need to be sure the glucosamine and chondroitin product you’re giving is going to be safe and effective. That means looking for seals indicating quality, checking ingredient lists, the scientific literature and doing calculations.
If all that seems like a lot of work don’t worry, I have a list of products I’ve vetted here. If you want to learn what to look for and how to evaluate products yourself keep reading!
Pharmaceutical products (drugs) are regulated by the FDA with requirements to insure that the medications contain what they say they do and nothing else. Supplements like glucosamine and chondroitin are not subject to these regulations so they don’t actually have to contain any glucosamine or chondroitin and could have other things (harmless fillers or even potentially harmful things) in them.
That’s why it’s so important to only use trusted brands which are adhering to FDA standards for Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and have had independent testing of their products to confirm they contain everything they are supposed to and nothing else.
So what should you look for in a glucosamine and chondroitin supplement? Look for products with NASC (National Animal Supplement Council) Quality Seal or CL (Consumer Labs) Approved Quality Seal or has been tested and approved by another independent lab.
Also look for products with a minimum of ingredients. Wouldn’t more things be more helpful? It seems like it should be but unfortunately it’s usually not when it comes to supplements.
Dose is important for these things. By the time they’ve packed 10 “helpful” things into a single treat, there’s not very much of any one thing in there and not really effective doses of any of them.
Also a lot of the “extra” ingredients are herbals like Boswellia, Turmeric, and Yucca which aren’t going to be effective for all patients and need specific dosing so it’s kind of a waste of money to be giving them if they’re not going to be helpful for your pet.
You’ll often see Omega-3’s or Green Lipped Mussels (Perna canaliculus) which are another source of Omega-3 fatty acids. You can learn more about those in my post on Omega-3’s but the short version is that the dose is probably going to be too low in these “let’s put in 17 things that are good for joints” type products and most patients who are eating real foods don’t need supplemented with Omega-3 fatty acids so probably not worth buying.
Many products contain Vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Unlike people dogs make their own Vitamin C and even giving them huge doses of it in food only increases the amount in their blood for a couple hours. There’s also no evidence it is even helpful for preventing or treating joint problems in dogs so companies are just adding it as a marketing ploy. Don’t waste money on supplements like this.
There are some things that are commonly added that I don’t mind: MSM, hylauronic acid, manganese, copper, or magnesium. Again most pets eating real food don’t need these but they don’t hurt and might help (especially for pets still eating processed foods). I wouldn’t go out of my way to find them but if they’re in an otherwise good glucosamine chondroitin supplement the effective doses are small enough that they should be effective even in combination products.
See my post on the best glucosamine chondroitin supplements for pets for a list of products that have met my strict standards for quality.