Creaky joints? Go nuts.
Brazil nuts. Photo: Suzannah Skelton
by Mark Derewicz
The older we get, the more our joints creak. Carolina researchers may have found a new reason.
Joanne Jordan says that some people with knee osteoarthritis—a chronic deterioration of joint cartilage that makes walking painful—often have low levels of the mineral selenium.
“We found that when we divided patients into three groups, those with the highest selenium levels faced 40 percent lower odds of knee osteoarthritis than those in the lowest selenium group,” she says. “This suggests that we might be able to prevent or delay osteoarthritis of the knees and possibly other joints, but we need to verify these preliminary results.
“The next step will be in the lab to see how selenium affects cartilage. It might act as a protective antioxidant. Later, we’ll see whether selenium supplementation reduces pain or other symptoms.”
People with a varied diet should already have enough selenium in their bodies, Jordan says, but nearly one million North Carolinians and twenty-one million Americans have osteoarthritis. Foods such as seafood, red meat, Brazil nuts, grains, chicken, eggs, and garlic contain selenium, which is also found in some vitamin E supplements and vegetables grown in soil rich in the mineral.
Jordan’s research team became interested in selenium after learning that people who live in selenium-depleted areas of China are more susceptible to Kashin-Beck disease, which causes joint problems early in life. Scientists also suspect that malnourishment is to blame for the prevalence of osteoarthritis in developing countries.
Joanne Jordan is associate professor of medicine and orthopaedics, adjunct associate professor of epidemiology, and associate director of the Thurston Arthritis Research Center.
