<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

This may help some of  you. Or not. Here are the three primary "givens."

1. I have arthritis so I've been carefully avoiding caffeine, which has
caused noticeable trouble with the arthritis always within a day or two.
 From what I've read, caffeine is the only "food" they have established a
olid connection with making arthritis worse. I know there are other things
that some granola heads say will help or hinder, but they haven't had much
effect on me, and caffeine does.

2. My heart-burn seems to have been getting constantly worse.

3. I've been taking Cosamin DS and SAM-e for arthritis: the first for
a  year and a half, the second for about nine months. They didn't seem to
help much, but the longer I take them the better my arthritis gets.
Finally, I don't seem to have to have any symptoms at all now other than
stiffness, which is probably age. Yes, I know arthritis can go into
spontaneous remission for no reason, but mine hasn't done that ever before
for the last thirty years. Now suddenly it has. Coincidence. I think not.
(Therefore it must be  conspiracy :)

Since the arthritis seems to be gone, I've even started drinking real
coffee recently (and I don't need those two naps a day I've been taking :)
Since quitting the decaf, most of my heart-burn also seems to have left me.
I now have less than a twentieth of what I was having when drinking the
decaf (that's using the Borda/Condorcet scale of invariance :) (No, that
last was not serious. It just came out when I was typing :)

Conclusions: 1. I firmly believe these arthritis supplements really work
with no apparent side-effects; 2. I think the decaf may be much worse for
heart-burn than even coffee, which we've always known was one of the major
offenders in this arena. (and for what it's worth, I pee a lot less with
coffee than with decaf) Go figger.

I don't know if any of this will help anyone else, but perhaps . . . .  -vance