Four ingredients worth knowing

Twelve ingredients are printed on the bottle. Four of them account for most of the capsule by weight, and those four are set out below in the order the label prints them.

Glucosamine Sulfate 1,500 mg

The first name on the label and the largest published amount in the capsule. Glucosamine is a compound the body already puts into cartilage, which is why it leads almost every joint formula on a shelf. It is also the ingredient most often drawn from shellfish, and this label does not print its source.

Chondroitin Sulfate 1,200 mg

Second by weight, and the ingredient glucosamine is nearly always paired with. The two are sold together so consistently that a joint supplement carrying one and not the other stands out.

MSM 1,000 mg

Methylsulfonylmethane, third on the list at a round gram. It is a source of organic sulfur, and sulfur is one of the materials collagen assembly draws on.

Turmeric / Curcumin 95% 500 mg

Turmeric standardised so that 95% of the extract is curcuminoids — the fraction of the root the plant is grown for. It sits on the label next to the 10 mg of BioPerine black pepper extract, a pairing that is standard wherever curcumin appears.

The other eight

Vitamin C at 500 mg, boswellia serrata at 300 mg, quercetin at 250 mg, hyaluronic acid at 200 mg, collagen type II at 40 mg and BioPerine black pepper at 10 mg carry published figures. Omega-3 as EPA and DHA, and the zinc and selenium pair, are named on the label without an amount beside them. The full table, in label order, is on the homepage.

Why the order matters

Supplement labels print ingredients heaviest first. That is why glucosamine heads this list and BioPerine closes the published figures, and it is a convention rather than a statement about which one matters most.

Shellfish

Glucosamine is commonly sourced from shellfish. This label gives no source for it, so anyone with a shellfish allergy should put the question to the seller before ordering rather than reading anything into the silence.

What is not here

No effect is attributed to any ingredient on this page, and no study is cited. The amounts are transcribed from the printed label and nothing has been added to them.