How NOW MSM Became Part of One Active Adult's Day

Bev brought it up between games, the way she brings up most things, quickly and without ceremony. MSM, she said, and then the whistle went and we played the next point and I forgot all about it. What I did not forget was the last mile of the trail I hike most Saturdays, the long downhill through the pines where I stop talking because I am busy thinking about my knees.

I am 58. I retired two years ago from the front office of a high school. I walk about three miles most mornings, I play pickleball twice a week with Bev, and I garden from spring until the frost takes the tomatoes. I am not an athlete and I am not chasing a performance edge. I just want the downhill to stop being the part of the hike I dread.

I am also the kind of person who reads the back of the bottle before the front. Most of what sits in that aisle is a promise with a barcode on it, and I have walked past plenty of it without a second look. So when I tell you NOW Foods MSM ended up in my kitchen cabinet, understand that it took a while to get there.

First I asked Dr. Lowe. She is my family doctor and she has known me long enough to be blunt with me. She said to try one thing at a time, give each one a few months, and keep notes. That is how I have done it since: one product, alone, four months, then a two week break before the next one. I have been through five that way.

NOW Foods MSM was the last of the five and I have been taking it for eight months. The bottle holds 120 vegetarian capsules and the label lists 60 servings, so a serving is two capsules. They are unflavored, non-GMO, kosher, and made without gluten, dairy, egg or soy, which matters to me mostly because I read those lines on everything now. I take mine with lunch, because I eat lunch every day and I do not forget it the way I forget things first thing in the morning.

What I noticed did not arrive as a moment. It arrived as the absence of something I had stopped noticing I was bracing for.

About six weeks in, I came down the last stretch of the trail and realized I had not thought about my knees the whole way. That is the entire report. No lightning bolt, no moment where I stopped on the path and said well now. Just a Saturday where the downhill went by without me narrating it to myself. I have had the same experience on and off since, and on plenty of Saturdays I have not, which is why I am telling you the small version instead of the big one.

I want to be careful here, because I have read enough of these to know how they usually go. I am not a doctor and I am not going to tell you what this will do for you. I take two capsules with lunch. That is the whole routine. It is plain and unexciting and it does one thing, and if you are looking for a supplement that feels like an event, this is not that.

The other honest thing is that it is not load bearing in my life. When I miss a day, which I do, nothing falls apart. My knees are still stiff in the morning the way they have been for years, and the first four or five stairs are still the worst of it. Nothing about that changed. This is a small thing I do with lunch, not a hinge the rest of the day swings on.

What I did do is keep it after the four months, which I did not do with all five. That is the test I use now. If I stop and cannot tell the difference after a couple of weeks, I do not buy another bottle. With this one I could tell, on the downhill, in a modest way, so the NOW Foods bottle stayed in the cabinet and the others did not.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to ask your doctor or your pharmacist first, the way I asked Dr. Lowe, especially if you take blood thinners or any other medication, or if you are pregnant. I would tell you that no capsule is a substitute for the things you already know about: the walking, the water, the not sitting in one chair all day. And I would tell you to try one thing at a time. If you start four bottles in the same week you will never know which one did anything, and you will spend a lot of money finding out nothing.

I would also tell you that eight months in, the thing I value most about it is that it is boring. Two capsules, lunch, done. I do not think about it, I do not dread it, and I do not have to talk myself into it. Bev still has not tried it and Dale does not take anything at all, so this is one woman's routine and not a recommendation for a household. If you want to look at the facts for yourself, they are on the listing: the serving size, the capsules per bottle, the whole label. Read it the way you would read anything else you swallow.