Glucosamine plays an important role in preserving joint health. Glucosamine reduces joint inflammation and pain from arthritis, and may help rebuild damaged cartilage and slow the progressive loss of joint space that occurs in the disease.
Many people find that glucosamine is helpful for other kinds of joint pain as well, such as sports injuries.
Need a glucosamine supplement to relieve your joint pain? Don’t worry, our research team has you covered.
Here are the best glucosamine supplements available right now.
Our advisory panel and our research team rank the best health products and supplements based on performance, label accuracy, and the efficacy of the ingredients in the products.
- Best overall: Live Conscious MoveWell Glucosamine
- Best with hyaluronic acid: Essential Elements Glucosamine Chondroitin
- Best with MSM: Kirkland Signature Glucosamine With MSM
- Schiff Glucosamine
- Best For Inflammation: Phytochoice Glucosamine Chondroitin
Research
Rankings
Last updated: October 27, 2022
Glucosamine supplements considered: 25
Hours of research: 38
Experts reviewed: 8
Scientific papers referenced: 12
| IMAGE | PRODUCT | |
|---|---|---|
Best Overall  | 1. Live Conscious MoveWell Glucosamine
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Best with hyaluronic acid  | 2. Essential Elements Glucosamine Chondroitin
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Best with MSM  | 3. Kirkland Signature Glucosamine With MSM
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 | 4. Schiff Glucosamine
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Best for inflammation  | 5. Phytochoice Glucosamine Chondroitin
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 | 6. Made in Utah Glucosamine Chondroitin Turmeric MSM
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 | 7. Zenwise Advanced Strength Joint Support
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 | 8. USA Nutra Maximum Strength Glucosamine Chondroitin Turmeric MSM
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 | 9. Doctor’s Best Glucosamine Chondroitin MSM
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 | 10. Vitabreeze Glucosamine Chondroitin MSM & Turmeric
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 | 11. BlueBonnet Glucosamine Chondroitin Plus MSM
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1. Live Conscious MoveWell Glucosamine
MoveWell supports and protects your joints by maintaining cartilage, lubricating joints, and increase glutathione production to fight inflammation.
It accomplishes this through multiple clinically backed ingredients, including 600mg of chondroitin, 600mg of MSM, 1500mg of glucosamine, 100mg of AprèsFlex® Boswellia, 100mg of curcumin and 100mg of hyaluronic acid per serving.
MoveWell is free of inflammatory agents, including gluten, soy, dairy, and sugar. It is also manufactured in a GMP-certified facility in the USA.
For the absolute best joint support formula, MoveWell glucosamine is the best out there.
2. Essential Elements Glucosamine Chondroitin
Essential Elements Glucosamine Chondroitin helps to reduce joint inflammation and improve the formation of new cartilage.
It combines hyaluronic acid, curcumin and MSM with glucosamine and chondroitin to provide some of the best joint relief on the market.
Made in the USA and third party tested, it’s an excellent option.
3. Kirkland Signature Glucosamine
Kirkland Signature provides a solid dosage of glucosamine per tablet, and includes MSM as well, another popular joint supplement that fights inflammation and pain.
The capsules have a bit more binders and fillers than you’ll find in our top picks, but the dosage still makes it a solid pick.
4. Made in Utah Glucosamine
Made in Utah has a solid 500 mg of glucosamine per tablet, along with chondroitin, turmeric, and MSM plus a few less common extras. Boswellia extract, quercetin, and methionine all add to its pain-relieving power.
5. Schiff Glucosamine
Schiff’s glucosamine formulation delivers 1000 mg of glucosamine hydrochloride per tablet, along with 1.6 mg of hyaluronic acid, which assists with cartilage regeneration.
The high dose is great, but purists won’t like the additives, emulsifiers, and coloring agents included in the capsule.
6. Zenwise Joint Support
Zenwise is among the best when it comes to all-around joint regeneration. Its glucosamine content (500 mg) is middle of the road, but you’ll also find the herbal extracts like boswellia and curcumin, which can be tough to find in the competition.
7. Phytochoice Glucosamine Chondroitin
Phytochoice delivers a balance of glucosamine, chondroitin, quercetin, turmeric, and boswellia extract, so it’s a pretty versatile option. However, the raw dosage of glucosamine is not as good, which hurts its position in the rankings a bit.
8. USA Nutra Maximum Strength Glucosamine
USA Nutra’s take on glucosamine is pretty good, with 500 mg of glucosamine per tablet, as well as the namesake extras and quercetin and methionine for good measure.
The lack of extra filler compound is appealing to people who want to keep the additives in their supplement to a minimum.
9. Doctor’s Best Glucosamine Chondroitin MSM
Doctor’s Best makes a glucosamine supplement packed with glucosamine, chondroitin, and a specialized form of MSM. The only downside? The per-capsule dosage is not so hot, landing it further down in the rankings.
10. BlueBonnet Glucosamine Chondroitin
BlueBonnet delivers a simple, effective glucosamine supplement whose only weakness is a pretty low dose per capsule. The supplement design is great, but it just doesn’t match up to the competition when it comes to dosage.
Category winners
Best glucosamine overall: Live Conscious MoveWell Glucosamine
MoveWell includes glucosamine alongside an astounding five other biologically active compounds to fight inflammation, reduce pain, and encourage healing in connective tissue. Thanks to this breadth of ingredients, it’s our top recommendation.
Best glucosamine for inflammation: Essential Elements Glucosamine Chondroitin
Essential Elements includes several all-natural ingredients to assist with glucosamine’s anti-inflammatory properties. These include chondroitin, hyaluronic acid, and boswellia extract—all of which are great for cutting back on inflammation in your body.
Best glucosamine for joint pain: Live Conscious MoveWell Glucosamine
With joint-nourishing compounds like hyaluronic acid and chondroitin, plus boswellia and curcumin to cut down on inflammation, MoveWell is an easy pick for joint pain.
Best glucosamine with MSM: Kirkland Signature Glucosamine MSM
If you want to combine the cartilage-soothing effects of glucosamine with the powerful anti-inflammatory effects of MSM, Kirkland is the way to go. With 750 mg of each, it’s our top pick for MSM/glucosamine combos.
Best glucosamine for knees: Live Conscious MoveWell Glucosamine
The knee is one of the most common locations of arthritis and injury, due to the high forces it needs to bear during walking and other activities. MoveWell is a great choice for people with knee pain, because it contains compounds that combat inflammation that occurs in response to damaged tissue in the knees, and it includes compounds that encourage healing of connective tissue as well.
Best glucosamine with hyaluronic acid: Live Conscious MoveWell Glucosamine
Live Conscious delivers glucosamine alongside 100 mg of hyaluronic acid, which is renowned for its ability to lubricate joint surfaces. The focused formulation of this supplement makes it great for people who want to take advantage of hyaluronic acid’s mobility-enhancing properties.
Who should buy glucosamine?
Glucosamine is one of the most popular and most effective joint supplements for reducing inflammation, treating joint pain, and slowing down or potentially even reversing damage to cartilage. It’s a great supplement for:
People with painful knees, hips, or other joints. Glucosamine can’t work miracles, but many people find that it substantially reduces joint pain, and clinical research backs up its potential to slow down objective markers of joint damage.
People with osteoarthritis. Most of the research supporting the use of glucosamine focuses on osteoarthritis, which causes damage, degeneration, and inflammation, suggesting this is a great use-case for glucosamine.
People with sports injuries to their joints. Glucosamine can do more than just help arthritis: some research indicates it’s a useful way to reduce pain from sports injuries, like old knee or ankle sprains that never fully healed.
How we ranked
Since glucosamine is so well-studied in the scientific literature, we used the best clinical research to guide our selection of glucosamine supplements, based on the following criteria:
Effective dosage. We looked for dosages and formulations that lined up well with scientific studies —that meant supplements that make it easy to take what appears to be the optimal dosage for glucosamine, which is at least 1500 mg of glucosamine per day.
A focus on delivering pure glucosamine. Unlike our rankings of general-purpose joint supplements, we put less emphasis on the inclusion of other potentially biologically active compounds like MSM or hyaluronic acid when evaluating the quality of a glucosamine supplement.
While additional ingredients were a small perk that boosted the scores of some glucosamine supplements in our rankings, our primary focus was dosage and purity.
No binders, fillers, or artificial additives. We dropped supplements from consideration if they contained too much in the way of binders and fillers.
Since glucosamine is already derived from animal products (shellfish, usually), it didn’t matter to our research team whether the supplement was delivered in a cellulose or gelatin capsule.
The top performers were products that effectively delivered a high dose of glucosamine while keeping extra ingredients to a minimum.
If you are looking for a glucosamine supplement that provides the same benefits seen in the most successful scientific research, you’ll find it in our rankings.
FAQ
Q: Why would you take glucosamine?
A: Glucosamine is most popular as a supplement for joint pain that’s linked to osteoarthritis, and this is the application that’s most well-supported by scientific research.
However, it’s also logical to take glucosamine for other joint pain, like knee pain from an acute sports injury, or pain and inflammation from old joint injuries that never fully went away.
Q: Is glucosamine good for your joints?
A: Glucosamine has been studied heavily as a way to improve joint health and slow or even potentially reverse the degenerative progress of osteoarthritis, where cartilage is progressively damaged and inflamed over time, leading to pain and disability.
While glucosamine can’t work miracles, it does cut down on some of the pain and limitations to your normal daily routine that can be caused by joint damage and disease.
Q: Is glucosamine useful alongside MSM?
A: Glucosamine is thought to enhance the biological efficacy of methylsulfonylmethane, or MSM, which is another common supplement used for joint pain.
You’ll often find both glucosamine and MSM used as ingredients in joint supplements, and some research has successfully tested the efficacy of both in combination (1,2).
Q: What is glucosamine chondroitin?
A: Glucosamine chondroitin is a term applied to joint supplements that include both glucosamine and chondroitin, which is a chemically distinct molecule.
Chondroitin is a direct structural component of cartilage, and is thought to help boost the synthesis of new cartilage in damaged joints.
Glucosamine also helps support joint health, and most multi-ingredient joint supplements bank on both glucosamine and chondroitin being more effective in combination than alone.
Q: How long does it take for glucosamine to work?
A: Most research on the use of glucosamine is at least a few months in length, so you should try glucosamine for at least this long to see if it works.
One study on using glucosamine to treat long-term knee pain explicitly examined the time-course of glucosamine’s effects and found that most of the benefits attributable to glucosamine had appeared after eight weeks of use (3).
So, if you’ve only been using glucosamine for a couple of weeks, you may not have been using it long enough to get the full effect of the supplement.
Q: What is the best time to take glucosamine?
A: The timing of when you take glucosamine is not particularly important, because it is fairly long-lasting in your body.
However, you do want to take it every single day at approximately the same time to get optimal effects.
That’s what the pharmacological research supports, and is the protocol used by the most successful research studies on using glucosamine.
Q: What is glucosamine made from?
A: Glucosamine is usually made by taking shells from shellfish (like clams or oysters) and breaking down the molecules that make up their shells.
It’s an easy, inexpensive, and effective way to acquire a large amount of glucosamine.
This process is also why it is recommended to take glucosamine if you have a shellfish allergy—it’s likely that the allergens present in shellfish are also present in glucosamine in trace amounts.
Related articles
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- MSM
- Muscle relaxer
- Collagen peptides
- Fish oil
- Bone broth protein powder
- Vegan collagen
Recap
Glucosamine is a supplement whose efficacy has been tested by several large clinical trials and has significant benefits on joint pain.
Glucosamine appears to be most effective at preventing the loss of cartilage in your joints that comes from osteoarthritis, and also seems to be effective in many (but not all) studies examining pain and day-to-day function.
This indicates that glucosamine is best used early on to slow down the progression of arthritis, when your pain is still mild.
Glucosamine is very well-tolerated, meaning that you don’t need to worry about side effects, and the optimal dosage for best results appears to be around 1500 mg per day.
For BodyNutrition’s #1 glucosamine recommendation, click here.
