Osteovantiv Ingredients

Magnesium 37.5mg – This is only 9% of your RDI, meaning that it’s not going to do a whole lot to improve joint health, unless your mildly deficient. And it’s magnesium oxide meaning it’s the cheapest and least bioavailable form of magnesium possible. So, even though we said it’s 9% of your RDI, it’s more like half that. If you consider that you can get a decent magnesium supplement for $10 that will actually make a difference you’re better off doing just that rather than getting it from Osteovantiv. 

Now as to whether magnesium belongs in here at all, it is true that a deficiency in magnesium can cause joint pain, [1] but, it’s not going to do much unless you are. And considering vitamin D deficiency can cause the same, [2] and most studies suggest that more than 50% of American’s over 50 are deficient, the amount you need would actually fit in this capsules, which one would’ve made more sense. 

Standardized Cartilage 20mg – As we said this is a fancy word for type II collagen, there are a reasonable amount of studies on it’s effectiveness for joint pain. [3] And ultimately the results have to date been relatively inconclusive with as many studies suggesting it does nothing as those that have found some use. There’s reasonable anecdotal evidence as a lot of people swear by it, but as we said, this is available in a lot of cheaper supplements. This could be the ingredient doing the heavy lifting in Osteovantiv. 

Iso-Alpha Acids 300mg – This is Osteovantiv’s selling point, and unfortunately it’s not a great one. The hops extract is an interesting choice, and in a better supplement would’ve probably been an interesting extra element to include. There are some studies on it’s effectiveness for reducing inflammation and joint pain, but most of the studies are in animals or test tubes meaning that we don’t actually know if it has any real life implications or if this is even within the effective dosage range for humans. 

There has been ONE human trial on hops containing a standardized amount of this extract, but it used 2 grams at a 30% standardization, this means that the dose was double what we have in Osteovantiv. [4]. And whilst the trial in question was small, only 57 people including the placebo group, self reported pain levels were lower in those that took the extract. So, it’s not that there’s no evidence at all here. But, one study isn’t really great backing considering the ingredients we mentioned in the intro have far more.   

References

1 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34023805/ 
2 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6413222/ 
3 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8620403/ 
4 - https://austinpublishinggroup.com/nutrition-metabolism/fulltext/ajnm-v9-id1124.pdf