Arthritis and Horses
Everything aches as I shovel the wet snow out of the horse run, I can tell arthritis looms in my near future, but little did I know the very animal I am shoveling out could provide a cure. I’m Susan Allen stay tuned for OpenRange. At the Kentucky Horse park there is an inscription that says history was written on the back of the horse, if so, we had better make sure to includes the legs. An experiment using race and rodeo horses could hold the key to preventing osteoarthritis in humans. In a unique collaboration the veterinary and medical communities at Cornell University, Colorado State and University of California at Davis received a one point seven million dollar federal grant to research methods to grow cartilage using horses. It’s complicate but it involves using equine bone marrow to create a concentrate of stem cells that then fill in the area of cartilage damage . In a nutshell it is tissue regeneration. Certain people like certain horses, particularly athletic types, are predisposed to cartilage injury a precursor for arthritis in latter years. Currently the best prevention is a daily dose of glucosamine and MSN which is believed to promote cartilage repair and formation, why my hubby and my horses get their daily dose. Ronald Reagan used to say like to say that the “outside of a horse was good for the inside of a man” Now science confirms that the “inside of a horse” has amazing benefits for mankind as well. I’m Susan Allen