Gout is a form of arthritis (joint inflammation), characterized by an inflammation of mostly joints in the big toe, ankle or knee. If you have a gout attack, you will suffer from intense pain, swelling, redness, local inflammation and inability of use the joint normally. Unfortunately, gout cannot be reversed. All you can do is to relief the symptoms of the disease and most effectively prevent the extreme painful attacks from happening.

What is gout?

The needle sharp pain felt in the joint is caused by needle sharp uric acid crystals. These crystals form when your blood has an excessive amount of uric acid that can’t be excreted by the kidney’s like it normally should. Uric acid is a compound of so called ‘purines’:

• that are normally formed when your body is recycling its cells or
• that are found in your (the cells of your) food.

Remedies for gout prevention and during attacks

1. Acute attack treatment

The initial treatment aims to relief the symptoms of gout and to treat its causes. The following drugs can be used to reduce pain, swelling, redness and inflammation:

• NonSteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen, naproxen or indomethacin, which can help reduce the pain within 2 to 4 hours. You should avoid taking aspirin because it can abruptly increase uric acid levels and as such worsen the symptoms;
• Colchicine made from the poisonous Autumn crocus: taken immediately when the attack is felt and from then onwards every hour until the pain subsides or until the poisonous side effects makes you nauseous

For people who can’t take colchicine due to its side effects, nor NSAIDs due to e.g. possible stomach ulcers, corticosteroids and ACTH will be administered:

• Corticosteroids which will be taken orally or injected straight into the joint to reduce the inflammation extremely fast
• ACTH will be injected and if needed repeated over several days.

When you’re diagnosed with gout and have an attack, you must take the following measures:

• Don’t use the affected joint but only 24h after the gout crisis has passed;
• Apply hot compresses in the area. If this does not help, you can try applying ice packs.

2. Treatment after the first attack has subdued

Any person who suffered a gout attack and does not follow a specific treatment is most likely to suffer from recurrent attacks of gout in the future. Thereby, the goal of the maintenance treatment is to decrease the uric acid levels and prevent recurrent episodes of gout.

Some people can control their uric acid levels by:

• maintaining a normal weight,
• adopting a proper diet,
• avoiding alcohol (especially beer),
• avoiding drugs that increase the blood’s uric acid concentration (like aspirin) and
• avoiding drugs that decrease the uric acid elimination by the kidneys (diuretics that eliminate water fast without giving the kidneys the time to get rid of the uric acid)

Patients with no symptoms, but with high uric acid levels don’t need a specific treatment.

Most patients with gout need to take medication that lowers the uric acid level in the blood or increases the extraction of uric acid by the kidneys. In this case, the most recommended drugs are:

• Agents that catalyze the elimination of uric acid from the kidneys like Probenecid (sold as Benemid or Probalan) and Sulfinpyrazone (sold as Anturane)
• Allopurinol (sold as Zyloprim), which decreases the endogenous production of uric acid (since 2009 the FDA approved Febuxostat which is said to be safer than Allopurinol for people that suffer from kidney diseases)
• Colchicine taken in small quantities is said to prevent attacks or at least to reduce its severity.

For people that don’t have any results with any of the above mentioned drugs, there exists an experimental intravenous medication taken every 2 weeks to lower the uric acid level in the blood called Pegloticase (sold as Krystexxa).

Do not self medicate but ask your doctor for advice: inducing a decrease of uric acid in your blood could cause a sudden attack as well, especially at the time when you are already having an attack.

3.Treatment after painful lumps appear

If you don’t treat gout for 10 years, it becomes a chronic disease, with recurrent symptoms. Most likely your joint will be disabled due to visible lumps around the joint formed by excessive uric acid deposits, causing frequent or constant joint pain.

In this stage, you must take specific medication, according to your doctor’s prescription, which usually consists of the aforementioned drugs, in variable amounts. In rare cases, surgical intervention is necessary in order to remove these tophi or uric acid crystals formations that accumulated in intra-articular and periarticular regions around the joint.

Summarized

The above are guidelines on the remedies for gout, but the treatment should be customized according to the patient’s gender, age, phase of the disease, overall state of health, medical history and other medications taken.

Decreasing your diet of purine rich food is recommended. Selfmedication however is not recommended: when taking gout drugs, do monitor your blood levels regularly (every few months or at least twice a year).

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Did you know that cherries are only one of the many natural remedies for gout? And did you know that unlike conventional medicine, herbal remedies for gout come without side effects?

Do be aware that a natural cure for gout is not the same as alternative treatments to cure kidney ailments: the latter are most likely simple diuretics that will cause your body to retain uric acid and could trigger a gout attack.

Herbal remedies for gout

The most obvious alternative treatment for gout is Autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale) : the flower from which the well known conventional colchicine drug was derived. Herbal extracts as well as the drug do cause severe side effects like nausea, so you can only take them as long as you can stand the side effects and under guidance of a conventional or herbal doctor. Pregnant women are advice not to take Autumn crocus nor colchicine as a herbal remedy for gout as it could damage the development of the unborn baby.

Health food shops suggest nettle leaves (Urtica dioica) as a natural remedy for gout. Taken nettle leaves in the form of tablets (250 mg 3 times daily) or as tea is a proven uric acid treatment that improves your body’s excretion
of uric acid.

Other herbal remedies for gout that stimulate the elimination of uric acid through urine are:

• celery seed (Apium graveolens): drink an celery seeds tea infusion of 2 teaspoon in a cup of water, 3 times daily.
• gravel root (Eupatorium pu1pureum): drink a gravel root infusion of 2 teaspoon in a cup of water, 3 times daily.

Herbal treatment for gout pain relief

Devil’s Claw (Harpagophytum procumbens) has been used as a natural treatment for gout as well as for rheumatoid arthritis: it relieves joint pain and reduces uric acid levels. Therefore taking 750 mg Devil’s claw 3 times daily (containing 3% iridoid glycosides) can be helpful for treating gout pain relief and preventing gout.

A lesser known gout herbal remedy is found in pine-bark extracts and grape-seed extracts to reduce gout inflammation when taken 50 to 100 mg 3 to 3 times daily.

Turmeric is a natural cure for gout in Chinese and Indian – Ayurvedic – medicine. This gout herbal treatment is also used to cure other forms of arthritis and inflammations taken 250 – 500 mg 3 times a day.

Natural treatments for gout

The most documented natural treatment for gout are cherries: eating about 250 grams of fresh or canned cherries a day reduces uric acid levels and preventing attacks of gout due to the flavonoids that lower uric acid levels and give cherries their deep dark red-blue color.

When cherries aren’t readily available, try other dark red-blue berries as a natural cure for gout: blueberries, hawthorn berries, and bilberries. Some of these natural remedies for gout are available as gout supplements:

• take 80 mg bilberry extract with 25 % anthocyanidins 3 times daily.
• take 100 to 200 mg hawthorn berries extract with 1.8 vitexin-2 rhamnosides 2 or 3 times daily.

These flavonoids are so effective that you can now buy Quercetin – an extract of the saphora plant – and said to be the most active of all flavonoids. It inhibits the activation of mast cells and other inflammatory cells and it also prevents the action of xanthine oxidase, thus acting like allopurinol! Allopurinol acts by blocking the enzyme that converts the purine breakdown products hypoxanthine or xanthine to uric acid. However you cannot afford xanthine to accumulate, because it will cause kidney stones as well.

Other gout herbal remedies describe juniper berry as a diuretic herb that helps reduce uric acid when taken in capsules of 350 to 500 mg or as tea 2 times daily.

Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) at high doses is known to help the excretion of uric acid as well, as long as it is not used together with prescribed uricosuric drugs – drugs that increase the excretion of uric acid in the urine .

Natural remedies for gout summarized

Natural remedies for gout have been around for centuries. Since mankind still exists, herbal gout treatments and any other common gout natural treatment must have worked as good or even better than conventional medications. Do know that apart from toxic gout natural remedy Autumn crocus (and its equally toxic counterpart found in the conventional pharmacy: colchicine) there are no, and I repeat: there are no documented side effects when using natural gout cures. When you take conventional allopurinol, you lower uric acid levels but increase xanthine levels that could cause kidney stones, how dangerous is that!

Although it is true that using a conventional gout treatment with drugs: you can exactly measure how much active ingredient you administer a gout patient. But each person reacts different, has a different body weight and different
exercise regime, so it is clear that modern medicine is no longer exact science as soon as the gout medication enters your body.

If you combine conventional gout remedies with a natural cure for gout (like taking both quercetin and allopurinol), do tell your doctor or herbal doctor up front, as some of the medications could interact for better or for worse. In the case of taking more Quercetin, you should take less allopurinol. This is a great benefit of natural treatments for gout because one side effect of allopurinol is causing kidney stones after reducing uric acid levels leads to a built up of xanthine.

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Learn why gout and aspirin don’t go together: aspirin slows the excretion of uric acid from the kidneys. Curing gout pain with aspirin can trigger a new gout attack.

As we have said in our page about gout treatment: NSAID’s are used for gout pain relief by reducing the arthritis inflammation except for aspirine.

Any salicylate containing drug including aspirin can put you at a risk for developing hyperuricemia and gout and therefore is not useful when treating gout. In case you have gout and are taking aspirine to prevent heart attacks and strokes, do tell your doctor when he is prescribing your gout arthritis drugs like:

• allopurinol to reduce your body’s production of the cause of gout : uric acid or
• probenecid to help your kidneys excreting more uric acid,

because when taking aspirin, these gout treatments need a higher dose compared with "regular gout patients who don’t take aspirin". Do test your blood from time to time to be sure your gout treatment keeps your urate level well under control.

When having a headache or other small pains, don’t use aspirin but use equally effective paracetamol – also known as acetaminophen : aspirin may abruptly change uric acid levels and become a gout cause to trigger a gout attack.

Gout sufferers do avoid aspirin

The following products contain aspirine and should be avoided when you suffer from arthritic gout:

• Alka-Seltzer,
• Anacin,
• Arthritis Pain Formula
• Aspergum
• Bufferin
• Darvon Compound
• Doan’s Pills
• Ecotrin
• Empirin
• Excedrin,
• Fiorinal products and
• Percodan products.

Gout info summarized: gout and aspirin don’t go together because aspirin makes your kidney’s retain more uric acid, which is all what a gout therapy is NOT about. Aspirin taken for headache pain relief will interfere with treatments for gout and can trigger a gout attack. Aspirin taken to relief pain symptoms of gout can actually worsen your gout symptoms.

If you take aspirin to prevent strokes and heart disease, do tell your doctor when he is prescribing you medication for gout treatments.

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2 different gout treatments will be addressed:

1. acute gout pain relief
2. gout prevention

In order to prevent joints disabled through gout tophi, you need to follow preventive gout treatments to lower the uric acid levels in your blood with medication of preferably through a gout diet and a change towards a more healthy lifestyle.

Gout relief

Natural treatment for gout to reduce gout swelling :

• rest the affected gout joint after the initial gout attack for at least 24 hours or until the gout pain subsides
• a simple yet helpful gout remedy is to elevate painful joints
• another effective acute gout treatment is to apply ice wrapped in towels to place where the gout attacks occur. Apply for about 25 minutes several times a day. Although the cold can make you feel uncomfortable, your gout symptoms will be way more painful without ice.

Conventional gout remedies :

• colchicine (a natural yet toxic medication, taken from the corm of the Autumn Crocus or Colchicum) is most effective taken orally within the first 12 hours of the gout attack. You can take colchicine every hour until the gout pain becomes less or the side effects of colchicine like nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps or diarrhea, prevent you from treating gout with more colchicine

Gout arthritis is mostly treated similarly like other forms of arthritis:

• NSAID’s : non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs taken orally reduce the inflammation caused by deposits of uric acid in the body. Over the counter NSAIDs are aspirin and ibuprofen. Avoid aspirin as it may increase uric acid levels and make your gout symptoms worse. Keep taking aspirin as prescribed by your doctor when you are taking it for prevention or treatment of cardiovascular disease and strokes. As soon as you can get prescribed drugs, ask your doctor for more effective and less evasive NSAIDs used for gout and arthritis like Celebrex. NSAIDs can cause high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease, ulcers and heartburn so always ask your doctor what will work best for you
• injection of Adrenocorticotropic Hormone (ACTH) strongly reduces the inflammation of a gout attack
• glucocorticosteroids is both an oral as injected gout treatment to reduce inflammation

Gout Prevention

Since there is no real cure for gout, the gout help described below all aim to lower the amount of uric acid in your blood lowering the risk of getting a gout attack. If you reduce the following gout risk factors and keep the cause of gout at bay, you won’t have to suffer another round of gout pain anywhere soon.

Natural gout cures :

• gout diets are the most effective way of reducing the uric acid level in your blood by eliminating foods that cause gout.
  Do ask your dietician for a gout purine diet.
• non aggressive weight loss diets are useful for overweight people to lower the risk in developing hyperuricemia – abnormally high levels of uric acid in your blood: above 360 µmol/L (6 mg/dL) for women and above 400 µmol/L (6.8 mg/dL) for men.
• improving your health, especially when you have a high blood pressure, an under active thyroid gland, Kelly-Seegmiller syndrome, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (both syndromes where the enzyme that should control the uric acid level in the blood is not or insufficiently present) or any condition that causes a high turnover of death cells producing uric acid in the blood: some cancers, chemotherapy, hemolytic anemia and psoriasis.
• try to find alternative treatments in order to stay away from medications like:
• diuretics used to eliminate excess fluid yet decreasing the amount of uric acid that will pass in the urine
• aspirin as mentioned above or other salicylate containing drugs
• nicotinic acid vitamine

Conventional gout cures :

• drug treatments for gout to lower the body’s production of uric acid like allopurinol
• drug treatments for gout to increase the kidney’s ability to remove uric acid like probenecid.

Do not self medicate these conventional gout treatments as for example it is not recommended to take probenecid when you or your family has a history if kidney stones

Some doctors do prescribe NSAIDs or oral colchicine in small daily doses to prevent future gout attacks. Since every person is different, you do need to keep a gout diary to discover your personal diet for gout and discover which gout treatment works best for you in both acute gout attacks as well as in gout prevention.

Home and herbal remedies for gout

Gout treatments have been written down through the history of men kind, so do incorporate them in your change of gout diet and lifestyle and write them down in your gout diary:

• some people’s gout cure involve soaking their foot in Epsom Salt when the gout pain is felt in the big toe
• some old fashion gout sufferers take 2 tablespoons of organic apple cider mixed with 2 tablespoons of organic honey 2 times daily after a gout attack
• gout diets normally aim to avoid food rich in purines. Food good for gout found through the centuries are: fresh strawberries, cherries and cherry juice, skimmed milk, low fat yogurt, seeds, and grains
• the more water you drink, the more you can flush way uric acid
• exercise: exercise is needed to nourish the joint cartilage, to keep in shape and good overall health

The best gout remedy: change your lifestyle

Keep a gout and lifestyle diary in which you keep track of how you are improving your health and which foods could trigger a gout attack:

• follow a out diet avoiding purine rich food and consuming food that seems to be good for gout
• maintain a healthy body weight since obese people develop gout 4 times more likely than non obese people
• exercise at least 30 minutes a day
• drink as much water or fresh fruit juice as possible
• gout and alcohol don’t go together well: go easy on alcohol as it dehydrates your body and beer is high in purines
• find your personal regime of exercise, gout diet and conventional gout treatment

Gout treatment is a lifelong commitment and therefore a change in lifestyle for the better. Always remember that gout is luring under the surface and it’s not because you have it under control, you can forget about it. But when you find your best personal gout treatment, you will be able to enjoy your life without gout attacks!

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Learn how to cure gout with cherry juice, how to cure gout and why to choose cherry juice and not any other fruit juice.

Treating gout with cherries or cherry juice

Take action: try and see! In stead of wondering what the secret ingredient in cherries are that could cure your gout, just consider the wisdom that people do talk about cherries and gout treatment. People don’t talk about lemons and gout when it comes to treating gout.

Modern medicine is so obsessed with finding "the one magical secret ingredient", that they spend too much time and effort in not finding anything, where people keep on saying cherries gout, or drink cherry juice for gout.

Skeptics about cherry juice should know that high doses of Vitamine C help with the excretion of uric acid (gout is caused by a long period of excess uric acid in the blood – higher than 6.8mg/dl). Cherries are seasonal: I don’t know about you, but when cherries are in season, I use to eat them with the bucket. Hence my Vitamine C intake is huge which will help with the excretion of uric acid. But don’t focus on Vitamine C, focus on cherries.

Do know that for some people, Vitamine C rich fruits like citrus fruit does trigger their gout attacks. So it’s not about Vitamine C, it’s about cherry juice and gout. It’s about the entire cherry fruit. Again: if there was 1 secret ingredient to treat gout, you wouldn’t need to search websites that write about treating gout, would you?

Add cherry juice in your diet and monitor your gout attacks

The cherries for gout method will work for people who sometimes get gouty arthritis. The most scientific way to find out whether cherry juice is helpful for your gout is adding it in your diet without changing your regular gout prescription medication nor changing anything else in your diet nor exercise routine.

Add cherries or cherry juice in your diet let’s say 3 times a week and monitor over a period of months:

• are your gout attacks less frequent
• are your gout attacks less painful?

If you notice less or less painful gout attacks, then you can even add more cherries or cherry juice in your diet and keep on monitoring its effect.

Do know that eating lots of cherries can cause diarrhea. Also consider eating fresh cherries only as cooking them before preserving them in juice or tins will reduce the amount of Vitamin C drastically (but again, if Vitamin C was the only reason why cherries cure gout, people would have been eating any fruit for treating gout).

Cherries are seasonal, but at this time when it is snowing in Europe, my local fruit supermarket sells me fresh cherries from the other side of the world.

Bottom line: try to find fresh cherries or make them into cherry juice and monitor your gout attacks without changing the rest of your diet, prescription medicines and exercise routines.

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