<<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