Natural Remedies for Gout

What herbs, food, lifestyle changes etc. are good for treating gout?

I have not had a problem in 7 years.  That is painful and I know I don't want to go through that again. First thing I never eat 2 meals a day with pork or beef.  The second meal will be turkey or chicken.  I limit myself to 1 pork chop or 1 stake a day.  The other good thing is this significantly lowered my cholesterol to normal levels.  If I am traveling and accidentally eat to much pork or beef I take a tart cherry extract.  I wish you the best of luck.

James Duke, botanist extraordinaire (the Green Pharmacy), suggested celery (he experimented himself with celery seed and then several stalks per day), and to a lesser extent shiso (Perilla frutescens, he made mint tea with shiso added), licorice, turmeric, and then a "minimal" group of avocado, cat's claw, cherry, devil's claw, oat straw, olive, pineapple, stinging nettle, and willow. That said, he said that when he was having an attack he took the allopurinol.

My grandmother had gout and it was a horrible thing. Her diet was terrible and she didn't exercise, though, which probably didn't help much.

Tereza Okava wrote:James Duke, botanist extraordinaire (the Green Pharmacy),That said, he said that when he was having an attack he took the allopurinol..

I am hoping this means that I don't need to take it every day.  Due to the times we are going through, my pharmacy didn't have any available from July until now. So I ending up taking all of the emergency reserves that I had stocked up on.  I started taking it every other day, so I may just start weaning off it.

I found that tomaotes triggered a reaction though not as bad as an attack.

We live where there is lots of limestone and we have well water. After the last attack, we got a reverse osmosis system which I feel has helped me the most.  

When having an attact, I usually eat cherries. I can't say whether they help or not.

Anne Miller wrote:

When having an attack, I usually eat cherries. I can't say whether they help or not.

My reading suggested that specifically the "black" cherries work to help the kidneys to excrete the triggering chemicals like uric acid.

I saw a homeopathic doctor who worked to support my kidneys 4 years ago at least and now so long as I avoid the worst of my triggers and take 4 ounces of Black Cherry juice daily for a few days, I've not had the gout return.

The trouble is that we aren't all alike, so what will work for one person, won't necessarily work for another. Also, if you've got a large build-up in you system, it may take a lot of work initially to get the levels of all the component parts down to a level your body can manage without support.

Strange coincidence: I was just watching Sugar: the Bitter Truth on youtube, and at the 59:00 minute mark he shows that fructose breaks down into uric acid, causing gout and hypertension. Interestingly, fructose does not trigger an insulin response. He basically claims fructose is the prime factor in obesity, liver disease, gout, and hypertension. He also shows fructose is processed by the body exactly as alcohol, and has the same detriments.

My late husband found the one thing that consistently helped was sour cherry juice. He would buy Montmorency cherry juice. I'm not sure if that is the same as black cherry juice. Also avoiding triggers like too much meat, shellfish, alcohol, etc.

I cut down on my sugar and take a tart cherry and celery seed capsule once a day. (https://www.bronsonvitamins.com/tart-cherry-extract-plus-celery-seed-120-vegetarian-capsules.html?) No gout in 1 1/2 years...knock on wood. Last bloodwork my uric acid was within norms.

Jordan Holland wrote:What herbs, food, lifestyle changes etc. are good for treating gout?

I have battled this and found great results.

#1 for me is avoiding triggers. For me it turned out to be solanine sensitivity. So tomatoes, nightshades, blueberries, etc

#2 is flush the colon. Magnesium citrate, psyllium husk,  prune juice

#3 is alkaline foods. Cherry, dark cherry, beet juice, spirulina, alfalfa. Fish oil.

Hope my regimen helps you. I have used it for 15 years and have good management of the issue now.

I'll ditto the general prescription of reducing acid producing foods in the diet - meat, sugar, alcohol, especially.

I had a roommate who has gout. It was usually alcohol that brought his attacks on.

Jordan Holland wrote:Strange coincidence: I was just watching Sugar: the Bitter Truth on youtube, and at the 59:00 minute mark he shows that fructose breaks down into uric acid, causing gout and hypertension. Interestingly, fructose does not trigger an insulin response. He basically claims fructose is the prime factor in obesity, liver disease, gout, and hypertension. He also shows fructose is processed by the body exactly as alcohol, and has the same detriments.

I've read similar, however, I suspect that a lot of their data is a result of high fructose corn syrup replacing "real" food. There are people who've suggested that when Canada's Food Guide was re-written to consider "fruit" and "vegetables" to be equivalent parts of the diet, that increased Canadian's fructose intake with negative health consequences. Add to that the tendency of plant breeders to maximize the sugar in the vegetables they breed (think "super sweet peas" and "Sun Gold cherry tomato") and our levels of "hidden fructose" are heading in the wrong direction for those of us with tendencies towards gout. Fruit juices that used to be "just fruit" are often supported with "concentrated ____ juice" - which I read to mean, more fructose. It is *very* difficult to find a pure Cranberry juice where they haven't done sneaky stuff like that to, and the dried cranberries Hubby buys are highly doctored with extra sugar. (I try to keep one jar of "real" Cranberry juice in my larder in case I feel my bladder needs a little support.)

I think that avoiding added sugar is an honourable goal - which I fail at... sigh... but I do avoid the worst offenders - soda pop, fruit juices, fancy alcoholic drinks, low fat milk, commercial smoothies (I expect there are ways to make healthy home ones) - do you see a theme there? I try hard not to "drink my calories" - water and tea for me.

And in case you missed it, honey is very high in fructose. I still use it in my pumpkin pie recipe, because, well... pie...

Jay, I wondered about honey, but he didn't mention it. I think it may be about moderation. If fructose was absolutely toxic for our body, we wouldn't be able to break it down and use it for energy. As for fruits, he did say something like "God packages the cure with the poison." The key to fruits being healthy is the fiber. The fiber buffers the fructose. Ancient cultures consumed several times the fiber most people do today. He claims even sugar cane is healthy because of it. He even noted plantation workers were very healthy with it being a large part of their diet, while the people who ran the plantations and got refined sugar had poor health. I do wonder about some of the modern varieties you mention. I don't know if the sugars have been bred to exceed the healthy amount of fiber in them.

I recall Dr. Bergman saying not to drink any bottled fruit juice expecting any health benefits. After processing and storage, virtually all nutritional value has been destroyed, except the sugar. Does Canada have the same rediculous definition for "not from concentrate"? I hope not. Here, the legal difference in "from concentrate" and "not from concentrate" merely depends on whether it was pasteurized before or after reconstitution. Insane!

I have struggled with gout for the past 5 years. I did not know I had gout until a year ago.
It first manifested in my Achilles tendon, and I had no idea what I was dealing with. Eventually it spread to my big toe, and this was the clue I needed to put two and two together.

The first and most important thing to do is to identify your triggers.
Many attribute their gout flare ups to things like processed meats, offal, red meat, etc.

For me, I found that what actually triggers the gout is to eat any combinations of the aforementioned classic gout foods within 24 hours of consuming processed sugars,processed wheat, and alcohol.

Some of the worst foods for me have been: Takeout pizza, cakes, sweets, and****BEER**. Beer is almost a guarantee for me. If I eat nothing all day, and drink 3 beers, my gout will be flared up the next day.

I have since found that I can drink pretty much any other form of alcohol that isn't sweetened and be ok.

So to summarize, I have found that my biggest triggers of gout are Beer, Gluten, and Sugar. This may be different for everybody, but I suspect many others share these triggers, and would not have thought they would be triggers just as I used to.

Some other unexpected minor triggers for me are ibuprofen and acetaminophen . Taking these medicines slows down my gout recovery. I suspect it has to do with the strain placed on the liver.

That being said, what can we use in nature to treat our gout when it is flared up?

For me, the natural supplements have outperformed the pharmaceutical substitutes.

The first thing I do is to drink plenty of good quality water; until my urine is nearly clear and odorless.

In order of effectiveness for me has been.

TART cherry extract. The extract works best for me because the whole cherries have a lot of sugar, and since sugar triggers inflammation, recovery is slowed.

Tumeric. Tumeric works great for all the inflammation I have, and is best used in combination with tart cherry to have maximum effectiveness.

Mullein. Mullein tea is my local option. I find it growing all over the place in fall and winter. It's best used by drying the leaves for preservation and making tea from this. Mullein tea is not bad, and it starts working nearly immediately .

I'll end my entry by emphasizing that everybody is different, and what works for me may not work for you.  

Excellent advice Hamilton, you describe some things I haven't heard before. Especially the bit about NSAIDs. Another possibility for them delaying recovery from gout is that they prevent joints fron healing in general. Dr. Bergman says to never take them under any circumstances. Tylenol is the fourth deadliest drug in the US. People take them for pain. They don't work very well, so they take too much and/or too often, after all, it's just "over the counter" so it can't be too dangerous. The drugs prevent healing, so they keep taking them, probably too much, because the pain continues. By relieving the pain, they can continue doing whatever activity damaged the joint in the first place, further injuring it. It's a vicious cycle, and all the while the drugs are destroying the person's organs. I bet many people never consider these drugs could be causing issues with gout. I wonder if there are doctors out there advising their gout patients to  take NSAIDs to help with the pain?

I just did a quick search, and yes, websites are recommending over the counter painkillers for dealing with gout pain. Sigh.

Hamilton got me thinking about other drugs possibly triggering gout.
Apparently, penicillin may indirectly trigger it as well.

https://www.goutdiet.org/can-antibiotics-increase-uric-acid.php

https://www.goutcure.com/gout-news--the-negative-effects-of-antibiotics-on-the-body.html

Have you heard of Goutweed? (or maybe you know its other names- Bishop's Weed, Ground Elder, etc). I eat it every spring when fresh leaves come up, and it's quite tasty at that point, then it becomes tougher as the season goes on. If I had gout I would think about eating it more often, and making poultices with it for external use. I would not plant new patches of Goutweed though, it takes over and spreads like crazy in my climate.

http://www.healing-from-home-remedies.com/goutweed-for-gout-control.html

I have a friend who had gout, and his diet was heavy on meat, sugar, white bread, and alcohol. For many, many reasons you should be conscious of what you're eating and what it does to you!

Completely anecdotal, and second-hand, but...

There are a lot of people that get gout around here. This area also has one of the highest alcohol consumption levels in the country. Correlation is not causation, but, there is that.

Two of my friends here have gout. They both drink a reasonable amount and eat a lot of meat.

I feel sorry for anyone with bad pain, it can be hard to function when you have a lot of pain going on. I hope your symptoms have cleared up in the past months.

You are suffering from acidosis. In an emergency you can mix a shot of apple cider vinegar with 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda for quick relief. This mixture will alkalize your body quickly. But for prevention, simply balancing any acidic foods with a bit more alkaline foods is what you want. Avoid any medicines, especially colchisine! Medicines are all highly acidic.

Some of the most acidic foods are alcohol, coffee, chocolate, tuna, beef, sugar, grains, and sodas. Not that you cant eat them, but they need balanced out with alkaline foods. Some acidic foods are actually alkalizing once you eat them, like citrus and tomato to name a couple...

Its not so much the purines, but the ability of your kidneys to properly remove the uric acid which is crystalizing in your feet (mostly due to gravity).
Yes avoiding high purine foods like shellfish can be helpful, but treating the root cause or disfunction is more effective. In this case, kidney disfunction caused by acidosis, further exacerbated by acidic medications

Anne said on Nov 16 2020, "I am hoping this means that I don't need to take it every day.  Due to the times we are going through, my pharmacy didn't have any available from July until now. So I ending up taking all of the emergency reserves that I had stocked up on.  I started taking it every other day, so I may just start weaning off it.

After weaning off the gout meds, Nov 2020, I can say that I no longer take the meds.  I have not had a gout attack so I am very happy to have found this information:

Tereza said, "James Duke, botanist extraordinaire (the Green Pharmacy), suggested celery (he experimented himself with celery seed and then several stalks per day), and to a lesser extent shiso (Perilla frutescens, he made mint tea with shiso added), licorice, turmeric, and then a "minimal" group of avocado, cat's claw, cherry, devil's claw, oat straw, olive, pineapple, stinging nettle, and willow. That said, he said that when he was having an attack he took the allopurinol.

It is the last sentence, "That said, he said that when he was having an attack he took the allopurinol." which is the important piece of info.

Best wishes to all who have gout as only those people can truly understand.

If you look at Hamilton's list of trigger foods- beer, wheat, sugar, ibuprofen, and aspirin- all very acidic foods, which are impairing kidney function- not liver function. The kidneys remove uric acid from the body.

Drink tart cherry juice. Also if you have a flair up have a bee or ant bite the affected area. Works like a charm instant relief.

I am no expert on gout, but a friend of hubs had sent him a link to a video about an herb called Chanca Piedra:  (the video segues into a second video about Chanca Piedra that is even more informative, btw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy_pA6GdiVI

I am right now on the tail end of a particularly brutal round of gout in both feet that has lasted 7 days.  

Years ago, it was about the purines.  Specifically blue-green algae supplements.

And then later it had to do with penicillin (see a post above).  Yowch!

And now ...  i tried all sorts of different cherry things, and I tried alkaline stuff ...  i dunno, i tried lots and lots of things that are supposedly the sure-fire thing to solve gout.

...  but this time ...  this worked in about 30 minutes.  Calcium and vitamin C.  Normal doses.  Like usrda doses. 90% better in 30 minutes.  I could finally get to sleep.  And now, the next day, I am doing more and I suspect that by the end of the day I'll be 99% better.

Glad to know you got some relief!