Glucosamine may raise LDL cholesterol in some people

Q: A friend with arthritis said his high cholesterol dropped 20 points when he stopped taking glucosamine for joint pain. Can the supplement raise your cholesterol levels? — Anonymous

A: Scientists have been trying to pin down this potential side effect of glucosamine for years, and the answer is as elusive as the reason for Paris Hilton's celebrity.

Some small studies in humans and mice have found what docs have seen in some of their patients: Taking glucosamine made patients' lousy LDL cholesterol shoot up like the price of gold on a good day. But here's what we suspect: There may be a small group of people whose lousy cholesterol rises when they take glucosamine, but the majority do not have this adverse effect.

How can your doc tell which group you're in? Not by lookin' at ya. The only way is to check your cholesterol levels before you start taking glucosamine, then recheck them after you've been on the supplement for a couple of months, and compare. If your LDL cholesterol level has jumped up, stop the glucosamine. Odds are, you won't have to.

Q: My doctor put me on thyroid medicine, and I've heard that I'll be on it the rest of my life. Is this true? What would happen if I stopped taking it? — Nancy, Cheboygan, Mich.

A: We won't sugarcoat this: You could slip into a coma, heart failure or worse. Now everything else we say may seem kind of minor, but actually, the rest is all pretty good.

As many as 8 percent of women and 3 percent of men have what you have: hypothyroidism, which means you have an underactive thyroid gland (it's in front of your windpipe).

It isn't making enough hormone to regulate your metabolism, which can cause cold sensitivity, depression, fatigue, sluggishness, dry skin and hair, joint or muscle pain, weight gain, constipation, anemia, abnormal heart beats and cholesterol problems. You can see that the thyroid gland and its hormones are pretty important.

So when does the good part start? Right now. Because it's easy to treat what would otherwise be a highly risky condition. Just take the thyroid hormone replacement drug you were prescribed (the most common is levothyroxine).

Your doc will monitor you and may tweak the dose from time to time, especially if you become pregnant and as you age. Otherwise, that's pretty much that. If only curing the common cold were so easy.