Cissus Quadrangularis: The Superfood for your joints

Not a post on food or recipes this time, but since the topic hits home, I wanted to share this one with you.

What's the issue?

For as long as I can remember, I've been dealing with joint pain, discomfort and so on. Problem is that I have some type of hypermobility, which causes my knee joints to hyper extend and scrape on top of eachother and my elbows to bend past the usual 180 degrees.
After real intense crossfit workouts with high amounts of repetitions like pull-ups, squats, etc. my ligaments can feel inflamed and irritated as well. Kipping pull-ups are a far dream, since this movement puts an enormous strain on my shoulders as well.
With all this, I really wonder how I've managed through 10+ years of long distance running, I can only imagine the impact all this must have had on my skeletal structure.

Without sounding too dramatic; but I kind of gave up and accepted that this will be a part of my sports life and that I will have to train accordingly.
It was't until I came across something on Cissus (sorry, forgot where) that intrigued me. In the past I've used joint supplements before (you know, the ones with glucosamine that never helped)
As I studied more, the claims were very promising, and so I wanted to give this a shot.

Cissus what??

It's a funky name, that's for sure! Cissus Quadrangularis is a plant mainly found in Asia & Africa, and looking at this picture, it can actually be something my parents might have had in the livingroom next to the cacti & fern (child of the early 80's)

Anyway, it has other names, you can look that up here. It was already known and used for it's bone healing qualities in siddah medicine and that dates back over 10.000 years ago. So my simple assumption is that it's been tested quite thoroughly.

The product
There are few variations of cissus out there, you can buy it in powdered form or capsules.
In this case, I tried the capsules by USP Labs - Super Cissus Rx.
One bottle contains 150 capsules, each serving contains 1600mg of cissus (1 serving = 2 capsules)
Reccommended intake is twice a day, 2 capsules, at breakfast & dinner. So a bottle should last you for about 37 days.

The test
There were 3 things I wanted to test during this trial:

- knee pain/stiffness
- cracking sound in right knee
- right hip/groin pain

The results/conclusion
It started to take affect after about 30 days of use. That might seem long, but most people start feeling the
effect in that same time-frame, 25-30 days. I knew this in advance.

- knee pain/stiffness: reduced for about 60%
- cracking sound in right knee: still there
- right hip/groin pain: gone

These results were very exciting, since before the use, my biggest burden was the pain in the right hip. Also, as the week would progress, at around thursday my joints and ligaments would feel inflamed and irritated from crossfit training.

The conclusion for me personally is that I will definitely continue to use this product, and if you are looking for joint pain relief, this could right for you.

Looking to get stronger overall? Check out this article!