An excerpt

[Tivers@aol.com]

An excerpt from Chapter 7 of The Digital Mantrap by James Autio, BSEE, CSCS

"What is important to know about connective tissue is the importance of the 
anti-catabolic process-which means the inhibition of tissue breakdown. 
Because of my work with racehorses over the last nine years, which have much 
greater joint stiffness and connective tissue problems than digital man will 
ever know, I grasped rather quickly that the connective tisse anti-catabolic 
process is equal in importance to the anabolic process, but both together 
create great synergy. Let me explain.

Imagine you are looking at a pail half full of water with a serious leak in 
the bottom and a trickle of water flowing into the pail from a faucet. The 
bucket is the overall connective tissue structure, the water is the relative 
amount of connective tissue remaining, the hole is catabolism, and the faucet 
is anabolism. While you have been watching, the pail was full, now it is half 
full, and empty is right around the corner.

The most prevalent means of managing this problem today is to bury your head 
in the sand, like the ostrich earlier with the cholesterol pill, only this 
time the pill is some form or analgesic with anti-inflammatory properties, or 
non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, known as NSAIDs. The anti-inflammatories 
block the synthesis of pro-inflammatory prostaglandins derived from the w-6 
essential fatty acid called  arachidonic acid, which we will explore in depth 
later. The result is the pain goes away, but the problem grows. 

Unfortunately, NSAIDs inhibit the synthesis of connective tissue, meaning 
collagen and glycosaminoglycans, or GAGs. You buy a little time while 
painlessly circling the drain. In the meantime, the pail empties, and if the 
water symbolized cartilage, you are eventually bone on bone, and the NSAIDs 
don't work anymore, so the ostrich approach is replaced by a little Dutch boy 
or maybe even a masked man with a sharp blade. 

Or you can step up to the big leagues, the steroidal anti-inflammatory known 
as cortisone. You recall from the stress section, the catabolic hormonal 
cascade included in the glucocorticoids, cortisone and cortisol. The pain 
goes away again, but now you are promoting the catabolic process, breaking 
down connective tissue. In other words, make the pain go away at any cost. 
All of this might sound creepy, and you are right. It is. In any case, game 
over. Meet your new lifelong pals, osteoarthritis and the little Dutch boy.

The second approach is to turn on the faucet and watch the water level. You 
don't bury your head in the sand this time. Ths approach is spearheaded with 
glucosamine salts, chondroitin salts, green-lipped mussels, and shark 
cartilage compounds. All of these contain various connective tissue building 
blocks with the idea of promoting connective tissue synthesis, the anabolic 
process. This is smart. A normal digital man, eating a a nonvegan diet, 
consumes around a gram of GAGs per day. There are enzymes in the intestine to 
break the GAGs down into digestible forms, but, unfortunately, ingested 
connective tissue still shows up in the feces (7.13, Bucci, 1995).

Since the availability of glucosamine is the rate limiting step in GAG 
synthesis, this problem alone is enough to cause many variations of 
connective tissue-related digital man diseases, with osteoarthritis, a 
wear-and-tear scenario of articular cartilage, sitting front and center.  

I know what you are thinking. "Wait a minue, GAGs are not an essential 
nutrient. I can make my own GAGs". Yes, you are right. Glucose is three steps 
away from becoming glucosamine-6-phosphate. The pathway exists to roll your 
own GAGs from scratch, but it is apparently not very effective. The number of 
clinical trials validating the efficacy of dietary GAGs is overwhelming (many 
references in the bibliography of 7.14, Theodosakis, 1997). Remember, the 
controls were using the "glucose to GAG" approach but, obviously it didn't 
work very well.  The reason it didn't work doesn't matter, does it? You need 
dietary GAGs, period. In my work, from greyhounds to camels to horses to 
humans, I have found it advantageous to use a spectrum of GAG sources."