For Three Years I Held My Toothbrush With Both Hands. Then My Sister-in-Law Asked Me One Question About My Joint Capsules, and I Realized I'd Been Grading Them on the Wrong Day.

My alarm goes off at 5:50.

I lie there a few minutes before I move, and the first thing I do, before my feet touch the floor, is open and close my hands under the covers. Ten times each. Then finger to thumb, one at a time. Then I roll each finger in a circle, the way the sheet from the clinic shows.

Then I get up, go to the bathroom, and take the cap off the toothpaste with my teeth, because at 5:55 in the morning my fingers can't do it.

For three years I've held the toothbrush with both hands. One hand can't grip it hard enough to reach the back teeth, so the other goes over the top, and I brush like a child holding a spoon.

By 6:30 my hands are mostly my hands again. By the time the coffee's made I can do the top button on my cardigan. By eight, if you met me, you wouldn't know.

It's the first ten minutes. That's the whole problem. The first ten minutes of every morning, for three years.

If you're reading this, I'd guess yours look something like mine.

The shower goes on before the coffee, and I stand in it longer than I need to with my hands up in the water, because that's what gets them moving. Then the slow part. The cardigan goes on with the buttons undone. Coffee comes from the pot, not the jar, because the jar lid is a two-hand job and so is the cap on the milk. A fork at breakfast, not a knife and fork, because the knife needs a grip I don't have until seven.

Half an hour. Every morning. Before I start my day.

I've since read a good many women describe the same half hour online, in nearly the same words. I didn't know that for three years. I thought it was just my kitchen.

I ran an alterations shop for 31 years. I could thread a needle without looking and match a hem to a sixteenth of an inch. My hands were the business.

So when the mornings started, I decided it was age, and that a woman who'd made her living with her hands didn't go around telling people they'd stopped working before breakfast. If I told Frank, he'd worry. If I told my daughter, she'd start the conversation about the house.

My daughter caught me with the toothpaste cap in my teeth last Thanksgiving. I said it was stuck.

So I did what I think a lot of us do. I bought things, and I didn't talk about it.

The anti-inflammatory tablets. My doctor prescribed them, and they helped, for about a year. Then my stomach couldn't take them every day, and at the next checkup she looked at my kidney numbers and said no more, not daily, not at my age. I'd traded my mornings for my stomach, and then I traded them back.

The creams. Three tubes, two from the drugstore and one from the TV. They warm the skin, and that's all they do. Warm skin over stiff fingers is still stiff fingers.

The wrist band at night. The elastic kind. I wore it for a month. My wrist was fine in the morning. My fingers didn't get the message.

The half-hour routine. The curls in bed, the warm water, the slow start. I still do all of it, and I'd tell you to. It's the kindest half hour I know. But it's a way of waiting out the ten minutes. It isn't a way of finding out whether anything changes them.

The joint capsules. Here's the part I'm embarrassed about. Four bottles, over three years. I'd take one for two or three weeks, and every morning I'd stand at the sink and ask my hands: anything? And every morning the answer was a toothbrush held in two hands. So the bottle went in the cupboard with the others, and I decided they were all the same.

Four bottles. About $140. I never finished one.

Marion is Frank's sister. She's 71, she has the same hands I do, and she's taken the same joint capsule with her breakfast since 2013. Hers is a brand I couldn't find, so this isn't about her brand.

Last spring she was staying with us, and she saw me at the sink with the toothbrush. She didn't say anything then. At breakfast she said, “You've tried the capsules.”

I said I'd tried four, and none of them did a thing.

“How long did you give them?”

Three weeks, I said. Maybe four.

“And how did you know it wasn't doing anything?”

Because my hands were the same every morning, I said.

I had to think about that. No. Some mornings are bad and some are worse. January is worse than June. The morning after I've done the garden is worse than the morning after I haven't. I'd been standing at the sink comparing a Tuesday on the capsule to a Monday off it, and the two days were never going to match anyway.

“So what were you testing?” she said.

Then she told me how she'd found out hers was doing anything, and it wasn't the way I'd been trying to find out.

She didn't notice on the day she started. She didn't notice in week two. She said she took it for the better part of a year not sure one way or the other, because that's how it is: you can't tell a good week from the capsule.

She found out in February 2016, when she ran out and didn't reorder for a month. “By the third week I knew,” she said. “Not from anything I was watching for. From the jar lids.”

She's never once told me it works. She told me how she found out, which is a different thing.

I've thought about this a lot since, and I'll put it the way I'd have put it to a customer at the shop.

Arthritis pain moves on its own. You get good weeks and bad weeks whatever you do. So the day you start something new is the worst possible day to judge it, because on day three you can't tell the capsule from the Thursday. I'd been running my test on the noisiest day there is, and quitting before the noise settled.

Now think about how the people who are sure describe finding out. After Marion, I went looking, and I read every one I could find. They don't say “on day ten I noticed.” They say they ran out. They went to their daughter's for a month and forgot the bottle. They stopped to save money and started again a few weeks later. The ones who are sure found out on the stop, not the start.

That isn't proof the capsules work. I want to be plain about that. It's a reason to think the test I'd been running could never have told me either way.

So here is what I'm doing, and it's the first time in three years I've done it properly.

I wrote three things on an index card, in the handwriting I used for order tickets, and taped it to the bathroom mirror.

Then the rules, which I got from Marion and from the women who'd found out the hard way.

Eight weeks on, every morning, without grading it. I don't ask my hands “anything?” at the sink. I answer the three questions on the card and write the answers on the kitchen calendar. One word each. That's all.

Then two weeks off. Same three questions, same calendar.

Then I read the calendar. If the two weeks off look the same as the eight weeks on, the capsule did nothing for me, and I stop paying for it. If they don't look the same, I've learned something I could never have learned at the sink on day three.

Ten weeks. No judging in the middle. That's the test.

Please do this first. If your hands have changed, see your doctor about your hands before you buy anything, including what I'm about to tell you about. Mine is the one who took me off the daily tablets, and she's the one who knows what's going on in my joints. Nothing in a bottle replaces that visit. And this is not medical advice: talk to your doctor or pharmacist before you change anything you take, including stopping for two weeks.

One more thing Marion said, and every woman I read agreed with her.

A joint capsule is a months thing, not a days thing. The women who've stayed on one talk about it the way you'd talk about a good pair of shoes. Since 2012. Since 2013. “It took three months before I'd say anything either way.” Nobody says a week.

I believe them. I'd been giving it three weeks and calling that patient.

So if you want something that changes tomorrow morning, this is not that, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise. If you're willing to find out properly, over ten weeks, with a card on the mirror, keep reading.

I picked Stay Able Joint Support for the test for three reasons, and none of them is a promise.

The first is the label. It lists what's in it and how much, and I could read it without my glasses.

The second is what the label doesn't say. It doesn't tell me what the capsule does inside the joint, and after three tubes of cream that promised the world, I found that restful.

The third is the refund window, which is long enough to run the whole test inside it. More on that below.

What's in it, from the label:

MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), 300 mg
Glucosamine HCl (GlucosaGreen®, vegetal), 200 mg
Turmeric powder (root), 200 mg
White willow bark extract, 150 mg
Boswellia serrata extract (resin), 100 mg, standardised to 65% boswellic acids
Black pepper extract (fruit), 10 mg, standardised to 95% piperine
Hyaluronic acid, 10 mg

Two capsules, with breakfast. It's a daily thing, taken for months.

That's the whole promise. There isn't a bigger one on the label, and I'm not going to make one up.

I read the small print now. Here it is, straight.

It isn't the tablets. It doesn't claim to be an anti-inflammatory, and I won't tell you it stands in for one. If a doctor took you off daily tablets, that was a medical decision, and this isn't a way around it.

It isn't a cream. Nothing goes on the skin and nothing warms it. If a warm hand at 6 a.m. is what you're after, the shower is cheaper.

It makes no claim about what happens inside the joint, and I won't make one for it. Anybody who tells you what a capsule is doing to the inside of your knuckle is guessing, and you've paid for guesses before.

It isn't a days thing. Nobody I trust found out in a week. If your hands are different on day five, write it down and keep going, because day five is the day I can't trust.

If you want something that changes tomorrow's ten minutes, this isn't it. If you want to find out, over ten weeks, whether a daily capsule does anything for your mornings, keep reading.

The old me bought things. The new me taped a card to the mirror and a list inside the kitchen cupboard door. Everything on the list is free, and the capsule isn't on it.

1. Write down three things that happen in the first ten minutes of your morning and can be answered with a word. The cap. The brush. The button. Tape them where you'll see them with the toothbrush in your hand.
2. Answer them every morning on the calendar. One word each. No grading, no “anything?”, no feelings.
3. The finger curls in bed, before your feet touch the floor. Open and close, finger to thumb, the circles. The clinic sheet, if you have one.
4. Warm water on the hands first, before anything that needs a grip. Shower or tap.
5. The slow half hour, kept. It isn't a test, but it's kind, and the test doesn't ask you to give it up.
6. Tell your doctor the truth about your hands. Every year, or sooner if the mornings change. Take the card.
7. Show the pharmacist the label of anything new, especially if you've ever been on daily tablets or take anything for your heart or your blood.
8. Run the test on whatever you're already taking. If there's a joint capsule in your cupboard right now, you don't need to buy mine to start. Eight on, two off, three questions.

I'm in week seven of the eight. The stop starts on the ninth.

I'm not going to tell you what my hands have done, because I don't know yet, and that's the whole point of doing it this way. The calendar has forty-some mornings on it, one word at a time, and I haven't read it back. I'll read it at the end of week ten and not before.

What's changed is that I stopped standing at the sink every morning asking a question I couldn't answer. I answer three I can. I told Frank, who said he'd wondered about the toothpaste. I told my daughter, who texts on the first of the month to ask if the card's still up.

The first ten minutes are still the first ten minutes. I'm measuring them now instead of guessing.

• The first ten minutes of your morning are the hardest part of your day, and you've built a routine around waiting them out.
• You've bought a joint capsule before, taken it for two or three weeks, asked your hands “anything?”, and put it in the cupboard.
• You're prepared to find out properly, over ten weeks, with three questions on a card.
• You want what the label says and nothing more, and you'd rather a plain refund window than a bigger promise.

It's not for anyone hoping for a capsule that changes tomorrow morning. That doesn't exist, and you've already paid for enough things that said it did.

I spent about $140 on four bottles I never finished, and I couldn't tell you whether any of them did a thing, because I never ran the test.

Stay Able Joint Support is $29.99 a bottle, and a bottle is one month. You'll want two to get through the eight weeks without running out in the middle.

If it's not for you, you get in touch within 100 days and they refund what you paid. That window is long enough to run the whole ten weeks inside it, which is the only reason a woman with four bottles in the cupboard was willing to buy a fifth.

Choice one. Keep buying a bottle every so often, taking it for three weeks, asking your hands “anything?” at the sink, and putting it in the cupboard. Keep deciding the half hour is just how it is now.

Choice two. Write three things on a card. Tape it to the mirror. Take it with breakfast for eight weeks without grading it, stop for two, and read the calendar. Find out, once, properly.

Either way the alarm goes off at 5:50. I'd rather you knew what the first ten minutes were telling you.

P.S. If you only do one thing after reading this, make the card. It costs nothing, it takes two minutes, and it's the first honest test most of us have ever run on anything we swallow.

P.P.S. Marion still takes hers. She's never once told me it worked. She told me how she found out, which is a different thing, and the more useful one.

Dramatization. “Susan Miller” is a narrator persona created for this article; this story is a dramatization and does not describe an individual customer's experience. Individual experiences vary and no result is typical. This is not medical advice — talk to your doctor before changing anything you take. Stay Able Joint Support is a dietary supplement. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.