I’m sure the Puppet Show Dude would not agree with Sue on this one. Sue actually might be more persuasive if she employed puppets in her video.

Despite its popularity, a study released yesterday suggests that chondroitin may not offer any real benefit. Writing in The Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers said a review of 20 earlier studies had found that the benefit of the supplement was “minimal or nonexistent.”

“For patients with advanced osteoarthritis, a clinically relevant benefit is unlikely and the use of chondroitin should be discouraged,” the study said.

In an unrelated study, Consumerlab.com found that many OTC arthritis supplements that claim to include chondroitin are actually missing this ingredient.

Consumerlab.com found that eight of the 11 brands that claimed to include the chondroitin actually didn’t. One example in the study is Nature’s Plus Ultra Maximum Strength Chondroitin 600, which apparently contains no chondroitin at all.

I guess it doesn’t matter whether these supplements include condroitin or not, since it doesn’t work anyway.