My knees began to hurt badly when I reached age 52, despite their not having been subjected to joint-pounding activities such as jogging or extensive hiking. The pain began around the time when I started using resistance machines at the gym to build up my legs. The mechanical stress of straightening the legs against a resistive force probably would not have caused knee problems for someone with larger and stronger bones and tendons than mine, but I have a light skeleton. So, in my case, it was not long before I could not manage a flight of stairs without clinging to the railing.

A friend suggested glucosamine-chondroitin. I was skeptical, but I tried it. To my surprise, it worked just fine. I continued using this combination of supplements, and for about 8 years my knees gave me no trouble. But then, it seemed, the treatment petered out. Actually, what happened was that I began using a more intensive workout regimen that put even more stress on the legs. The day after each workout the pain in my knees would flare up to worrisome levels, especially if I did much standing or walking. Doubling the dose of glucosamine-chondroitin didn’t help.

As luck would have it, around this time I was asked to write about cetyl myristoleate (CM) for the LifeLink website. CM, I learned, was being promoted by the supplement industry as an arthritis treatment, based mainly on some rat experiments done in the 1970s. Again, I was skeptical — but of course I tried the treatment anyway. And again, I was surprised and pleased at the results: my knee-pain went away except for minor soreness on days following an unusually intense session at the gym.

History of Cetyl Myristoleate

The story of CM’s discovery has a dramatic appeal that has caused it to be told in many places on the Internet. In brief:

Harry Diehl, a scientist at the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases during the 1950s and 1960s, became personally interested in arthritis when a neighbor developed a severe case of it. He established a laboratory in his home and began experimenting with mice.

When Diehl subjected mice to treatments that were known to induce arthritis in rats or in humans, the mice failed to develop arthritic symptoms. He suspected that the mice contained a factor that protected them from the disease. After years of work in his spare time, he was able to isolate a substance from mouse tissue which seemed to be responsible for their resistance to arthritis. That substance was cetyl myristoleate — a compound easily made by reacting myristoleic acid with cetyl alcohol. When Diehl tried giving cetyl myristoleate to rats, he found that it protected the rats from induced arthritis.

Diehl patented his discovery in 1977, receiving a “use patent” for rheumatoid arthritis. He tried to interest pharmaceutical companies in conducting human trials with cetyl myristoleate, but none were interested — perhaps they felt that a mere use patent does not give adequate protection from competitors. This promising treatment for arthritis was therefore put aside for about 15 years.

As Diehl got older, he himself began to develop osteoarthritis. After other treatments failed him, Diehl decided to make a batch of cetyl myristoleate and use it on himself. And it worked! Family members and friends wanted to try it, too. Soon they became customers, and cetyl myristoleate appeared on the market as a dietary supplement in 1991.

Clinical trials

There have been four clinical trials of CM, all performed during the past ten years and all reporting symptomatic improvement in arthritis patients given CM. Unfortunately only one of these studies was published in an accessible research journal, and all four studies lacked the statistical sophistication required to garner the approval of the arthritis research community.

The official (and correct) view of the situation is therefore that CM supplementation is not a proven treatment or preventative for arthritis. The reason is simply that “proof” requires sufficient evidence, and the studies that could supply this evidence have not been done. By the same token, it is equally true that CM has not been shown to be ineffective as an arthritis treatment or preventative. Nevertheless, the scanty evidence that does exist consistently points in the direction of effectiveness.

Individual reports

While reports from individual CM users are not considered scientifically convincing, there are plenty of such reports on the Internet from users who consider CM to be the “bee’s knees” of arthritis treatments. Nearly all of these testimonials, however, are found on websites of companies selling CM, and I'm reluctant to rely on these for information. Arthritis-oriented message boards have little to offer about CM, pro or con. Testimonials that seem to me more likely to be genuine are from people who have used CM to treat arthritis in their pets or horses. See http://www.my2by2.net/responseproducts/Testimonies.html, for example.

My own knee pain was not necessarily an arthritic condition — it may have stemmed from stress on ligaments or other tissue. I did not have it diagnosed by a medical practitioner. Whatever it was, it was triggered by resistance exercises or extended periods of walking or standing. And it was ameliorated by cetyl myristoleate in combination with glucosamine-chondroitin.

Dosage

Many CM vendors recommend a 30-day treatment consisting of a total of about 15 grams of cetyl myristoleate. This is supposed to suppress arthritis symptoms for a long period. They also claim that lipase enzyme must be taken to “digest” the cetyl myristoleate. Neither of these concepts makes sense.

While a limited course of treatment might possibly provide lasting protection in the case of an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis, it is unlikely to do so for osteoarthritis or other ailments resulting from chronic and ongoing injury, such as that caused by exercise. For these conditions it would make more sense to use CM on a continuing basis. My own experience suggests that 200 mg twice per day can be an effective regimen. It is important to read the product label carefully, since the CM ingredient is sometimes listed as a “complex”, and the amount of actual CM is given as a percentage of the complex.

I also disagree about the need for a lipase supplement. It is claimed that CM must be broken down to cetyl alcohol and myristoleic acid in order to be absorbed. This argument is nonsense. Even assuming that lipase can accomplish this conversion, there is no reason to think that the body would be able to put these components back together again after they get absorbed. Lipase was not used in the animal experiments that support the use of CM for arthritis. Nor did I use lipase with CM — yet my knees benefited anyway.

Some companies are selling CM in bottles with misleading potency information on the labels. For example, one product displays “500 mg” in large letters beneath the product name on the label, but closer inspection reveals that there is only 100 mg of cetyl myrisoleate in each capsule — the other 400 mg are related compounds that have less or no efficacy. Another product is promoted as “cerasomal” CM; the list of active ingredients contains 10 fatty acid substances, none of which seem to be cetyl myristoleate.

Price

Cetyl myristoleate is still a fairly expensive supplement. For example, LifeLink sells it for $2.57 per gram of actual CM. If you find a CM product that seems to cost much less than this, you are probably being misled, as noted above.