I am not sure, but after reading the sites about Celadrin, all I think it does is relieve pain by reducing inflamation. The glucosamine helps actually rebuild lost cartiledge and that reduces the friction at the joints, thus reducing the pain. Celadrin certainly wouldn't hurt and it would seem to be worth trying. I think that the two things work differently.

well, when I get really tired of them, I bite them off, but I am sure that somebody will say that's a really bad idea. I have one right now too, but this is only day 2

Well, my story is sort of complicated. I had a horrible case of influenza and pneumonia back in l995. Then I was on antibiotics for 2 months. I don't know if the antibiotics did me in, or it was the flu/pneumonia, but shortly after that, I developed fibromyalgia and also started going through menopause. I also developed irritable bowel syndrome, GERD and sleep apnea. Its hard to sort it all out, but something seems to cause all of this stuff in me. Are you bowels acting the same? Do you suddenly feel extremely full after eating? Are you on any other meds? When my GI problems were their worst, I was put on a PPI (proton pump inhibitor). That helped the symptoms for awhile. Pepsid (an H2 blocker) does absolutely nothing for me, so you might ask your doc for a prescription for a PPI......oh wait....I think prilosec is otc now. You could buy that and try it. Don't lose hope yet. This might just be a temporary thing you're going through. There is a Ph.D. guy who was on the GERD forum for awhile who wrote a book on how carbohydrates cause alot of GI problems. He believes our systems aren't designed to eat all these carbs and they can't be digested quickly and they ferment, and that causes alot of gas/reflux, etc. So I think you'd do well to lower your carb consumption. The stress echo I had went like this: You go in, and they put you on a heart monitor, and then you get on a treadmill, and they slowly increase the speed and incline, until you reach your target heartrate. Then you immediately lay down and they do an echocardiogram on your heart. It doesn't hurt at all. If they want you to have a nuclear med stress echo, then you will have to have a contrast medium injected into your vein.......but most stress echoes are the first type I talked about. It shows if all your heart muscle and valves are working right. what kind of doctor are you seeing? Once they rule out a heart problem (which I'm sure they will), then I would suggest seeing a good gastroenterologist. I think for some of us, as we age, our parts just don't work as well, and we can't abuse them like we used to. I know that my GI tract does fine, until I start eating too much, and then it starts to fail. You might be able to take care of this problem, just by changing your eating habits. I know how hard that can be! I've struggled with it my whole life. Its much better for me than it used to be, but I think that's because my hormones finally settled down. Men have hormones too, and sometimes they get wacky. I actually think my strange chest sensations are a combination of my GERD and my IBS.

I also repackage my dry goods in the cupboard. After I got an infestation of insects in some grain products, I decided to so something about it. One day, my brother's friend showed up with a box of old-fashioned mason jars. They had turned pale blue with age, and had wire clamps to hold down the glass lids. (Real old, but cool!) I bought them from him. I put all my dry goods inside them, and that way, even if one of the products came down with "bugs," it never spread. That worked fine for a several years, but then we moved to a new house. There was not as much storage space. The jars didn't fit into the new house's cupboards as well. There were two different heights, and some had a different diameter. So I standardized by getting quart mason jars -- wide mouth -- and the white plastic screw-on lids. (Didn't want to mess with the two-part lids that came with the jars.) Each jar holds about one pound of dry beans. Easier to find stuff, now that the jars are all the same size and height. I use pint size jars, also wide mouth, for smaller quantities. They stack.