[eledumb]

I had a pretty horrific left knee injury wrestling. I was carted off to the hospital, when the accident was described to the Orthopedic surgeon he actually recoiled and was concerned I may have totally destroyed my and that it might not be repairable, it was 1979. From the time of the accident until I was in surgery it was less than 3 hours.

Somehow I managed to only stretch all my knee ligaments, ACL PCL,MCL,LCL, a few small inline tears, but nothing severed, but he said they were like overused rubber bands all stretched out. I did however shred all the cartilage. The cartilage was a mess, so much so that when they surgically removed all the cartilage from my knee. I have the video of the surgery, all my knee cartilage was removed, they scraped the bones in order to give me the smoothest ride possible, but it doesn't do much. When you don't have cartilage in your knee it's pretty obvious.

Fast forward 22 years to mid 2001 when I start following the teachings of Linus Pauling regarding L-Ascorbic Acid and L-Lysine for heart disease prevention. I started taking high levels of both in divided doses during the day. My stress levels plummeted, and my overall health significantly improved, but after about 6 months I started to notice my knee was changing, a lot. My pain was going away and I didn't notice the bone on bone activity, after about 9 months my knee stopped hurting completely.

In fact it felt so good that I started walking for exercise, normally after 5 minutes of walking I felt like I was gun shot in the knee, but nope I was able to walk fine for as long as I wanted. I then started jogging and then running, no pain, no pain at all.

I've seen my orthopedist and while he's not willing to just give me and MRI, based on all of his examination he said my left knee is no different then my right knee and he didn't believe me that I had all my cartridge surgically removed 20 years before. I took the video, just in case, and I played the video. My knee has a unique scar from when I was a child and fell on a bottle, I had the scar when they performed the surgery and shot the video and I still have the scar, so there is no doubt that all my cartridge in my knee was surgically removed in 1979.

L-ascorbic acid and L-Lysine are basic building blocks for cartilage. I'm just a sample size of one, but I know my cartilage is back, maybe not all the way back, but more than enough back that my knee rock solid stable, it's smooth as silk, I have no pain and my orthopedist can't find a difference in my knees.

For what it's worth.

[tomorrowsworld]

So in the 80's the BBC had a program called Tomorrow's World. They had a race horse which had worn its cartilage which would have meant retirement. Surgeon opened front knee enough to drill up into bone from where the cartilage had worn our, bone marrow (stem cells) spilled out, sealed up knee and the stem cells adopted/became the tissue it was next to which included new cartilage. Horse recovered quickly, like allowed to walk around in a day or two and was back running when stiches were removed. No visible signs of pain. Hailed as a success for worn cartilage.

I don't understand why the medical professionals use metal alloys for joint replacements considering how the metal is attacked by the immune system and deposited elsewhere in the body. Doesn't make sense.

[DrScump]

Isn't that basically the same as microfracture surgery in humans?

[LegitShady]

L-ascorbic acid is vitamic c and L-Lysine is one of the essential amino acids. This doesn't seem to be particularly groundbreaking supplementation.

You get a whole bunch of L-Lysine every time you eat meat/chicken/fish/milk/legumes. Vitamin C is a common supplement.

Were you 'dosing' at extremely high levels? excess vitamin c is secreted in urine. Your body can't store excess amino acids either - they are converted to ammonia and then into urea/uric acid in the liver.

How high were your 'doses'?

[lhuser123]

When I read the name L-Lysine, it suddenly reminded me that I used to buy it exactly for that reason.

A doctor recommended to have surgery on a joint, but I didn’t have the money or insurance. So I did some research and started taking supplements that contained L-Lysine among other things. Also started doing light exercises just to increase the blood flow to that joint. And some how it was fixed.

I think is the only supplement that has actually worked for me.

Edit : glucosamine was another of the supplements I was taking.

[Fjolsvith]

I do physical labor and take two supplements to keep my joints from bothering me: Glucosamine Chondroitin Complex and Instaflex Advanced.

I started the first one many years ago when I was lifting 30-80 pounds shoulder high all day at work. It noticeably reduced the joint pain I experienced after about two weeks.

The second I started using this summer and wow. I'm 50 years old and feel like I can play racquetball again.

With my business my right shoulder was deteriorating due to raising buildings using a handyman jack. I could not lift a glass of water off the nightstand while in bed. Since taking the Instaflex, my shoulder has steadily improved and I'm confident I will soon have my full strength back.

[abecedarius]

I wonder if eating gelatin would work similarly; it's basically collagen. https://chriskresser.com/you-need-to-eat-gelatin-here-are-th... -- or conversely I wonder if your supplements would work better for me. (I was starting to suspect arthritis until I added this into my diet.)

[ncmncm]

Gelatin goes right through, undigested. Fact doesn't stop scams, though.

I used to eat a lot of Lysine to try to control cold sores. Didn't work.

[abecedarius]

Interesting -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin#Digestibility claims otherwise.

[phodo]

Does the body absorb collagen in potent enough concentrations if you eat gelatin?

[abecedarius]

All I can say is that it made an unmistakeable difference for my problem within a week, and it seems safe to try. It's my general understanding that proteins get broken down to amino acids in digestion, so the expected advantage for generally healthy people would be in getting enough of the right ones in the right proportions.

[SiVal]

I can only hope that you'll take this story and evidence to a nearby research university/hospital/med school and convince someone that they could win fame and fabulous prizes if they found out you were correct and pursued the research successfully.

[hermanhermitage]

Fascinating - thanks for sharing. Another request for dosage levels here.

[majjam]

Would you mind sharing how much you take or would it be clear if I research Linus?