Download your free low purine diet for gout ebook to find out which foods to avoid for gout.

Gout is caused when uric acid levels in your blood are too high over a prolonged period. Uric acid is a waste product during the break down of purines. Most of the uric acid in your blood is made by your body when cells die. About 1/5th of the uric acid in your blood comes from the food you eat.

To avoid gout attacks it is logical to follow a lifestyle that prevents the build up of uric acid in your blood:

• drink enough water or fruit juices
• avoid eating food that is high in purines: download the low purine gout diet list inside our gout diet ebook
• exercise
• maintain a healthy body weight without going on a crash diet nor following protein rich diets like the Atkins diet.

Download our free low purine diet for gout ebook to find out which purine rich foods to avoid, which foods to eat in moderation and which foods wont cause you any gout attacks.

Apart from following a gout purine diet, you should also add to your diet foods that are good for gout, and you should be able to treat your gout without further medicine.

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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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Gout prevention following an easy and delicious gout diet based on 2 pillars:

• eating more delicious food that is good for gout : these foods flush more uric acid out of your body
• avoiding foods that cause gout : a low purine diet for gout

Diet for gout

Gout and kidney stones are both caused by long term high levels of uric acid in your blood:

• 85% of this uric acid is made by your body
• 15% of this uric acid comes from what you eat and drink.

Diets for gout based on avoiding purines – purine causes uric acid levels to rise – may lower this 15% portion of uric acid in your blood and does help in gout prevention between 2 acute gout attacks.

Apart from gout and diet restrictions, any uric acid gout diet should compliment food products improving your body to pass the 85% uric acid it produces itself. This gout diet information is strongly ignored by some people pushing the use of medicine for treating gout.

Gout and foods

What is gout and why is food so important in treating gout? During history, gout disease used to be called a king’s and rich man’s disease because most people those days:

• hadn’t access to purine rich food
• had a lot of daily exercise
• weren’t obese

Nowadays however:

• most people have access to purine rich food like seafood in cans and beer
• most people don’t exercise
• just admit it: if you live in the US, you are most likely close to obesity and to make things worse, people following the Atkins diet are in even greater risk of developing gout and people that go on a fast crash diet equally fast increase the amount of uric acid in their blood and crash to worsen any gout symptom.

Gout arthritis evolved from a king’s disease to a common form of arthritis due to a dramatic change in modern lifestyle with bad choices for health and food.

Gout diet foods to eat

Apart from following a gout prevention diet that avoids food rich in purines, the best diet for gout includes not only cherry juice being a proven gout home remedy but many more food products that through the centuries have been proven gout natural remedies. Read more at our must eat diet sheet for gout.

Low purine diet for gout

The easiest and most logical arthritis gout diet is avoiding foods that cause gout. Below is a list of foods high in purines yet it is recommended you do keep a gout diary as not all purine high foods cause symptoms of gout in all
people. As with all general information about gout: everybody is different!

Diet for gout during an acute gout attack

• drink 8 to 12 cups – 2 to 3 liters – of water. Or at least half of this amount of water and the other half of healthy juices -like cherry juice for gout- or coffee
• do not drink alcohol, unless your doctor prescribed you to a one glass of red wine a day. In this case do discuss with your doctor what benefits your health most during an anti gout diet
• avoid foods bad for gout and high in purines: seafood, meat, foods that contain yeast (bread and beer)
• go easy on gout nutrition eating foods with moderate amounts of purines like asparagus, mushrooms, peas, kidney and lima beans, spinach, whole-grain breads, whole-grain cereals and white poultry meats.

The diet for gout sufferers therefore should contains foods low in gout purine like fruits, fruit juices, coffee, tea, pure chocolate, cocoa, tomatoes, green vegetables, nuts, bread without yeast, low fat milk and low fat dairy products like yogurt and cheese.

Gout diet advice for chronic gout or in between gout attacks

Continue the above mentioned diet for gout patients with acute gout. A gout diary will pay off to find which and how much of the purine rich foods for gout mentioned on the gout diet sheet you should be able to eat without suffering a gout attack.

Follow a normal, nutritious diet and follow a diet to maintain or reach slow and steadily – 1 to 2 pounds a week, or half to 1 kilo a week – a healthy body weight since overweight people have more chance to accumulate uric acid in the body.

Gout diet summarized

Mostly a diet in gout articles are what I call gout free diets only eliminating purines. However, the best gout diets work 2 ways:

• by flushing out as much as gout causing purines from your body as well as
• by keeping your purine intake as low as possible.

Rule of thumb of any diet to prevent gout should be lowering your amount of protein intake to sufficient levels only. Good protein sources are tofu and low fat dairy products. Add to that small amounts of peanut butter and eggs and only eat 4 to 6 ounces (120 to 180 grams) of meat, fish, and poultry. Do follow a gout purine diet with clear gout diet restrictions and to make it more fun: lots of gout diet recipes.

Any gout treatment diet should strive to reach or maintain a healthy weight. Limit the fats in your gout diet foods by choosing lean meats, fish, skinless poultry, and low fat milk products. Avoid high fat desserts and deep fried foods and only use 3 to 6 teaspoons a day of butter, oil or salad dressing.

A good gout diet plan includes high carbohydrate foods like bread products without yeast, cereals, rice, pasta, vegetables and lots of fruits, especially the well know gout cherries and equally effective pineapple.

Personalize your gout cure diet by keeping a gout diary noting down everything you eat, and all you do for exercise and avoiding stress until you find the gout diet and gout nutrition that fits you and your lifestyle best. Leave a comment if you want a copy of our free gout recipes ebook.

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Complete list of foods that you should eat to protect you against further gout attacks. Food good for gout you must add to your daily gout diet for optimal gout prevention and a more healthy lifestyle.

How to prevent gout

Since you know the gout causes, it is obvious that a diet to prevent gout arthritis states foods to avoid with gout : food that is rich on gout purine. As a rule of thumb, purines are found in all protein rich food but to stay healthy you do need to have proteins in your diet.

To prevent gout the American Medical Association offer the following dietary gout treatment guidelines for people with gout, following a healthy diet :

• where the calories come for at least 70% not from fat, especially not animal fats
• where 15% of calories and sources should be soy, lean meats, or poultry
• low in protein
• high in fiber-rich whole grains, fruits, and vegetables

Atkins-Gout is a big NO when treating gout! Atkins and gout don’t go together as the Atkins diet is full of purines and the diet causes stored body fat to be consumed releasing even more uric acid.

Foods to prevent gout

Gout cherries have reported through history as the best gout home remedy. Nowadays gout research goes far and beyond to find cures for gout discovering exact compounds for preventing gout:

• by lowering the amount of uric acid in the blood or
• increasing the kidney’s ability to pass more uric acid.

It is easy to understand that also natural gout cures look for a gout diet prevention that includes foods that have the above qualities to prevent gout without bothering which exact compound in the good foods for gout are causing the health benefits.

It is therefore recommended that you keep your own gout diary in order to discover your ideal gout treatment and prevention. Start by getting inspired by the list of gout foods that other people eat to prevent gout successfully. You will notice that these foods not only can prevent gout attacks, but they are recommended by doctors for other health reasons as well:

• cherry juice for gout obviously
• fresh red-blue berries like: cherries, blueberries, strawberries…
• red tomatoes
• bananas
• dark pure chocolate and cocoa
• green-leafy vegetables like celery, kale, cabbage, parsley
• pineapple and other food high in bromelain
• food good for gout that high amounts in vitamin C like raw red cabbage, raw red bell peppers, raw tangerines, raw mandarins and raw oranges

What more to add in your diet to prevent further gout pain from gout attacks

The most easy natural remedy for gout is making sure you drink a lot so your body has enough fluids to expel the uric acid in the urine. Drink:

• purified water
• fruit juices
• carbonated water or carbonated fruit juices
• coffee, tea
• low fat milk and yogurt

When you are following a gout diet eliminating foods that cause gout, make sure that you substitute the products you eliminate with foods like:

• low-fat dairy products
• high fiber foods like breads, cereals, pasta, rice, as the above mentioned fruits and vegetables
• tuna and salmon, flaxseed, nuts, seeds for your essential fatty acids
• tofu, although made from soy, is still better than always eating meat

Personal gout treatment and prevention

After reading this gout care post, you know that there are:

• purine rich foods to avoid for gout AND
• gout foods that you should take as delicious and natural remedies for gout.

Again we need to stress that everybody is different and efficient gout self help includes keeping your own gout prevention dairy where you write down what you eat and what you do on a daily basis. Why? Because not everybody will get gout attacks when eating foods that are on the list of foods to avoid gout:

A gout research part of the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study trying to answer the question how to cure gout by foods, found that drinking milk could actually reduce a person’s risk of developing gout by as much as 43 percent. Beans, peas, mushrooms, spinach and cauliflower – all on the gout foods blacklist because of their purine content – were exonerated by the gout test, which found they did not appear to be a factor in developing severe gout.

Summarized: a diet for gout should avoid purine rich foods and include the above lists of food good for gout like red blue berries, low fat dairy products, fiber rich food, water, juices and fresh foods high in vitamine C.

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Does any of the gout causes listed below apply to you? If yes, read which gout causes cures you need to follow for preventing gout attacks.

Cause of gout : uric acid crystals

Uric acid and gout: the ultimate gout cause inflicting the terrible gout pain are needle like uric acid crystals that are deposited in the joints where they inflict inflammatory arthritis that in turns leads to heat, redness, swelling and pain of the gout joint called gout inflammation.

Uric acid crystals only deposit when there is an excessive amount of uric acid in the blood. Uric acid results from the breakdown of purines which:

• are formed from the body’s normal process of body cells that die and release purines
• are found in purine rich foods which are therefore called gout causing foods.

Only when people have a prolonged period of too high uric acid levels in the blood – called hyperuricemia -, uric acid crystals can be formed to induce gouty arthritis.

So even when avoiding what foods cause gout, your uric acid level in the blood can still be too high when for example:

• your kidneys are not breaking down uric acid well
• chemotherapy or other causes suddenly increase the dead cells in your body, elevating the amount of purines, increasing the amount of uric acid in your blood triggering the deposit of uric acid crystals or triggering a gout attack.

What causes gout

The first answer you hear when you ask the question what is gout and what causes is will normally be: "you have too much uric acid in your blood, have you been eating food that cause gout? Go low on your intake of gout
purines…"

Gout and diet is only part of solving what causes gout because most likely everybody in your family eats the same food yet not everybody needs to follow gout cures. How to treat gout strongly depends on all causes that:

• increase the amount of uric acid in your blood and
• decrease the amount of uric acid expelled by your kidneys.

Find below an extensive list of all possible causes of gout.

• age and gender: gout is rare in children and young adults. Men between the ages of 40 and 50 are more likely to develop gout than women. Women rarely develop gout arthritis before menopause which let us believe that hormones could play an important role in gout causes and treatment
• family history: 20% of people with gout have a family history of gout disease
• obesity: obese people have more cells for turnover and breakdown and increase the build up of purines and uric acid. Since obesity is chronic, it’s much more common for obese people to trigger a gout attack
• dehydration: when you don’t have enough water in your body, your kidneys can’t dissolve much uric acid in your urine. Drinking alcohol is an activity that causes dehydration. Gout-Alcohol is a no go, especially when you drink beer that happens to be high in purines as well.
• kidney problems: gout cause and treatment of gout can easily tracked down to renal insufficiency in older people
• thyroid problems: hypothyroidism contributes to high levels of uric acid in the blood
• blood pressure problems: high blood pressure contributes to high levels of uric acid in the blood and is commonly called high blood pressure gout
• enzyme problems: 2 rare syndromes called Kelley-Seegmiller syndrome and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome describe a disease where the enzyme that controls uric acid levels is not or insufficient available
• cell turnover problems: psoriasis, hemolytic anemia, some cancers and chemotherapy break down a lot of cells in a very short time causing a sudden increase in purines and uric acid in the blood
• medications that interfere with the excretion of uric acid:
• diuretics pass fluid much faster than normal without dissolving the uric acid at an equal rate
• aspirin gout: aspirin and other salicylate-containing drugs can trigger gout as they make it more difficult for the kidneys to expel uric acid
• vitamin nicotinic acid or niacin in doses above 50 mg daily competes with uric acid for passing in the urine
• cyclosporine used against rejection of transplanted kidneys and other organs can cause an accelerated form of gout after only a few years of hyperuricemia and even in pre-menopausal women
• levodopa: it is reported that there are cases of gout occurred during levodopa therapy for Parkinson and it is also noted that patient develop an increase in uric acid levels without gout symptoms while receiving levodopa treatment.

Foods that cause gout

The most talked about gout causes cures involve a gout diet that avoids foods that cause gout. If after avoiding foods that cause gout you still have more than 2 gout attacks a year, you need to see whether there are other gout causes from the above list you need to work on.

Do know that as stated in the gout information at your gout treatment page, there is a shortcut to forget about the above list of gout causes and treatment by simply taking gout medications that:

• reduce the amount of uric acid in the blood or
• increase the ability of your kidneys to pass uric acid

Gout cause and treatment for gout summarized

Gout is a form of arthritis and by reading the gout treatment page you will know how to prevent gout. This joint disease that is caused by a prolonged period of too high uric acid levels in the blood. This will result in the deposit of uric acid crystals. These gout crystals will cause the typical acute and extremely painful gout attacks.

Gout treatment can be done by changing your lifestyle inspired by the above list of gout causes and avoiding gout causing foods. When you changed your lifestyle and remedies for gout still develop into more than 2 gout attacks a year, it is wise to start treating gout causes with gout medication.

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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 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 exactly what causes gout and pseudogout: difference between gout crystals and pseudogout crystals.

Gout Crystals Images

The above gout crystals image shows gout uric acid crystals also known as monosodium urate crystals in synovial fluid taken from a joint with gout disease. Seen during gout diagnosis under a polarized light microscope magnified 400 times only. A gout crystal is shaped like a needle or like a rod.

What causes gout is when high levels of uric acid or sodium urate accumulates in body fluids, form crystals and get deposited in joints causing gouty arthritis inflammation. Gout crystals may also be deposited in cartilage, in bones or as lumps or tophi under the skin on the edge of the outer ear, the back of your hand, elbow, heel or toes:

Gout crystal image showing gout tophi on the ear

Gout crystals forming gout tophi on each side of the bone near the joint. When no gout tophi are seen externally:

• the damage to or
• the erosion of the bone caused by such a gout tophus will be clearly visible on an x-ray.

Gout used to be a disease of adult men, because their kidneys excrete uric acid less well than women and children. Gout starts with a sudden gout attack that lasts for a few days. Without proper gout treatments, gout tophi will appear and disable the joints.

Treating gout focuses on keeping the uric acid level in your blood below levels that could trigger gout attacks.

Pseudogout Crystals

Pseudogout crystals are calcium phosphate crystals and clearly different than gout crystals.

Gout and pseudogout do show similar arthritis symptoms like sudden acute attacks of one joint getting warm, swelling up and becoming extremely painful. Treatments for reducing the acute symptoms of both forms of arthritis are similar.

However:

• pseudogout prevention is best achieved with small daily doses of colchicine
• gout prevention and gout treatment is based on avoiding purine rich foods that cause gout as well as medicines lowering the uric acid level in the blood or raising the efficiency of the kidneys to expel more uric acid, hence reducing the risk of the formation of gout crystals.

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Gout symptoms occur when high levels of uric acid cause deposit of sodium urate crystals in the joints where they cause inflammation or gouty arthritis. After suffering a few days with intense gout pain, you typically have 6 to 12 months before you have to endure your next round of gout symptoms.

Gout symptoms cheat sheet

• unlike other forms of arthritis, gout attacks happen "suddenly" without prior stiffness
• the first gout attack happens mostly at night in your toe
• gout attacks can be accompanied by upset stomach or flu-like fever symptoms
• at first gout symptoms disappear completely after a few days
• without gout treatment the crystals will accumulate in the joint to form lumps – called tophi – which will remain swollen and painful between gout attacks
• hyperuricemia or long term high levels of uric acid ( > 6mg/dL ) in the blood. However it can be that at the moment of your gout attack, your uric acid level in your blood is normal
• to be sure: examine the presence of uric acid in the fluid of the affected joint

For people with a long history of gout attacks, lumps of urate salts – or tophi – may also occur on the edge of the outer ear and the back of the hand, elbow, heel or toes. Gout diagnosis involves again a simple sample to determine the presence or absence of gout crystals.

Chronic symptoms of gout tophi after not treating gout

Gout and pseudogout symptoms diagnosed

Since gout attacks mimic joint infections and a sample has been taken of your joint fluid, do ask your doctor to also examine the joint fluid for the presence of bacteria and pseudogout crystals that form when there is too much calcium in your blood.

Some pseudogout symptoms are similar to gout symptoms: a sudden and fast painful and hot swelling of a joint, although people with pseudogout are normally older than people with gout and the affected joint is bigger than with gout, most commonly pseudogout symptoms occur in one knee.

There are people with high levels of uric acid in their blood who will never show any gout symptoms, although it is still unknown why these people don’t develop gout crystals. Most likely these people have damaged kidneys and excrete more uric acid than normal. For most people however it is clear that a long term high concentration of uric acid in the blood will increase the chances of gout crystals deposits in the joint and cause gout.

Why do gout symptoms only appear suddenly

It is not clear why after many years of hyperuricemia in the blood suddenly a gout attack occurs. It is noted however that most gout symptoms show after so called "stress gout triggers" like:

• surgical operation
• injury
• excessive beer drinking
• eating purine rich food.

The good news however is that these gout crystals can dissolve in uric acid again and get excreted in the urine like they should have. On the downside, new gout crystals can be formed again as well causing another round of painful gout symptoms.

Early gout symptoms

It is noted by people who keep a gout diary that a gout attack occurs:

• after a fever
• after not feeling well
• after a stomach upset
• after noticing a very yellow urine: a sign of dehydration, hence not enough water to excrete the uric acid.

Gout symptoms and treatment

What causes gout is the accumulation of uric acid in the blood that gets deposited as crystals around the joints (the same crystals that cause kidney stones). Uric acid is a waste product in the blood. Cures for gout aim to reduce
the amount of gout uric acid:

• by drugs:
• allopurinol to lower the  uric acid production in your body
• probenecid to help your kidneys to remove more uric acid from your body
• by avoiding foods rich in purines.

Pain gout symptoms treatment involves pain relief through:

• NSAIDs : non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs taken orally
• glucocorticosteroids taken orally or injected in the painful joint
• colchicine taken orally within the first 12 hours of the gout attack
• intramuscular or subcutaneous injection of adrenocorticotropic hormone.

Gout symptoms and women

Gout is a metabolic disease most often affecting middle-aged to elderly men and postmenopausal women. Gout used to be called the disease of kings and not the disease of queens. However more women with high blood pressure who are taking diuretic medicine – water tablets – increasingly show gout symptoms compared to the times there weren’t any duiretics.

Gout symptoms and gout diet

There is a clear relation between food and gout. During the first and second world war in Europe, gout symptoms were as scarce as food was. A modern diet for gout sufferers doesn’t have to be as drastic as during these wars. However symptoms of gout disappear when people have no chance to become obese and the opposite logic: the more rich your diet becomes, the more you will have chances to develop gout.

Gout is the only form of arthritis where the symptoms can be controlled with a gout therapy that avoids foods that cause gout. In other words you follow the so called gout diet. Simply cutting down slowly but surely on calories and reduce obesity also helps in gout prevention.

Living with gout should be enjoyable in the 21st century when you keep a gout diary to discover your personal diet for gout. Write down everything you eat, as some people show gout symptoms after eating lemon juice, oranges, strawberries and even tomatoes. Other people find that drinking cherry juice is an effective gout remedy. Main thing is that each person has to find out for himself what foods cause gout and what gout diet foods are beneficial in their cure for gout.

Everybody has a different metabolism, yet experience shows that changing your eating habits, especially following a gout purine diet – reducing your intake on purine rich foods – does help control gout symptoms. Research is in progress to pinpoint food good for gout: some foods like low-fat dairy products seem to lower the risk developing gout attacks.

Gout symptoms summarized

Gout symptoms appear suddenly in one joint, are extremely painful and go away in 3 to 10 days. The symptoms are always triggered or after a stressful event, eating the wrong food or getting dehydrated. However gout symptoms only occur in people with a long term high level of uric acid in their blood.

Gout symptoms may re-occur every 6 to 12 months but shouldn’t re-occur with adequate gout management based on gout prevention medicine, reducing intake of diuretics and especially a change in diet and lifestyle. The best gout self help for gout sufferers is keeping a gout facts diary where they write down what they eat, what they drink, what they do for exercise and what happened before gout attacks.

Acute gout pain relief is similar to reducing the pain in any other arthritis diseases by using NSAIDs or corticosteroids.

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Clear info about stages of gout arthritis and how they affect your gout treatment. Gout is a form of arthritis or joint inflammation. The cause of gout lies in a prolonged excess of uric acid in the blood that deposits itself as crystals in the joints causing the most painful of all arthritis. Knowing your gout stage will help you taking the exact gout remedies for further gout prevention.

4 stages of gout

Gout is a disease that can progress into the following 4 stages:

1. Asymptomatic hyperuricemia

In this stage, you won’t have any gout symptoms. However you will have elevated levels of uric acid in your blood. This is called hyperuricemia and can cause gout. Usually no gout treatment will be given in this stage.

2. Acute gout – Acute gouty arthritis

In this stage of gout, your hyperuricemia has caused the deposit of uric acid crystals in your joint spaces. This leads to the most know symptom of gout: a sudden and intense swelling and extreme gout pain in the joints, most likely the big toe, which also becomes very warm and tender. This acute gout attack usually happens at night and can be triggered by:

• alcohol or drugs
• the presence of another illness or
• stressful events.

With or without gout treatment, these gout symptoms will disappear after 3 to 10 days. It is utterly important that you get this attack diagnosed as a gout attack by examining the synovial fluid from the affected joint. Once gout is detected, cures for gout will be prescribed for future gout prevention.

Gout treatment in this acute stage will boil down to resting the gouty joint for at least 24 hours and gout pain relief using:

• orally taken NSAIDs (non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs
• corticosteroids orally taken or directly injected into the gouty joint
• colchicine within the 12 first hours of the gouty attack, taken every hour until the gout symptoms improve or the side effects of colchicine outweigh the benefits
• the proven gout home remedy: ice wrapped in towels applied to the gouty joints a few times a day for at least 20 to 30 minutes

3. Interval or intercritical gout

This is the period between 2 gout attacks and you wont see nor feel any gout symptoms. Your second gout attack may only happen months or years after your first acute gouty arthritis and can keep people from taking gout serious and treating gout. However over time gout attacks will occur more frequently and last longer.

It is during this stage that you need to change your lifestyle, take doctor prescribed medicine to lower the uric acid levels in your blood or increase the kidney’s ability in removing uric acid and follow a diet for gout avoiding foods that cause gout.

4. Chronic tophaceous gout

In this stage of gout, the causes of gout will have disabled you by inflicting permanent damage to joints or even damage to the kidneys due to the development of kidney stones. When diagnosed early and following an holistic gout cure, people should never reach this advanced stage of gout.

Gout stages summarized

The cure for gout lies in early detection. Take regular blood samples to find out whether your uric acid levels are above 6 mg/dL. Once you have your first gout attack, make sure it is diagnosed properly with a synovial fluid examination. Once you know you have gout, make sure you change your lifestyle and follow a gout diet to avoid a next gout attack to never reach stage 4 of chronic tophaceous gout.

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Learn the difference between gout and pseudogout : the 2 most common crystal-induced joint diseases.

Gout and pseudogout

The difference in these 2 types of arthritis is based on the crystals causing the inflammations:

• with gout the inflammation is caused by MSU – monosodium urate monohydrate – crystals
• with pseudogout the inflammation is caused by CPP – calcium pyrophosphate – and should therefore be called CPPD of calcium pyrophosphate disease.

Pseudogout Symptoms

Both gout and pseudogout symptoms are similar: both come with acute and episodic attacks of joint warmth, pain, swelling, and stiffness. Since the crystals that irritate your joints will be different, eliminating foods that cause gout to cure pseudogout is completely irrelevant.

Nearly half of all pseudogout attacks occur in the knee where gout mostly attacks the big toe.

Not only can pseudogout resemble gout, the symptoms also resemble those of seat and rheumatoid arthritis. The best way to diagnose gout and pseudogout is removing synovial fluid from the affected joint and test for the presence of MSU to diagnose gout or the
presence of pseudogout crystals CPP to diagnose pseudogout.

Pseudogout treatment

There is no cure for pseudogout. The treatment for pseudogout lies entirely in controlling pseudogout symptoms
with non specific pseudogout medicine:

• NSAIDs – NonSteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs – are normally used to counter pseudogout pain and inflammation
• low doses of NSAIDs and colchicine are used as a future preventive measure for pseudogout
• as with any sever joint pain, cortisone shots into the affected joint are very helpful against pain and inflammation

Unlike with gout where a diet poor in purines has proven to be helpful, there is no diet that is helpful in controlling pseudogout.

More pages for pseudogout

Since real pseudogout causes are unknown to me and pseudogout doesn’t lie in the scope of our treating gout site, we refer you to:

• pseudogout wikipedia : the process described in wiki called chondrocalcinosis is the forming of chalky deposits of the CPP calcium crystals in the cartilage (see the pseudogout knee picture on top of this page). When these calcium crystals shake loose from the cartilage, they start irritating the synovium – the tissue surrounding and protecting the joint and producing synovial fluid to nourish and lubricate the joints. This will cause the joint to become hot, red and swollen.
• pseudo gout treatment on medicinenet.com

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List of foods that cause gout: avoid consuming large quantities of the following purine rich foods, especially meat products. Also be aware that when you don’t eat any foods that cause gout, you can still trigger gout attacks by for example following a crash diet that’s high on protein.

Gout diets will be balanced and make sure you avoid foods rich in purines and go easy on foods containing a moderate concentration of purines. To be more successful in treating gout, you should not only maintain a healthy diet, but also exercise regularly, keep your body weight at bay, make sure you drink enough, do reduce your beer intake and drink wine if you need to drink alcohol, take your gout medication and at least check your blood-level twice a year.

Historical food that cause gout was "rich mens food" like partridges and beer.

What is gout and what causes it?

Gout is a form of arthritis. The cause of gout occurs when sodium urate crystals accumulate in the joints. These crystals build up after a prolonged high level of uric acid in the blood. Uric acid results from the breakdown of purines. Purines get into the blood:

• as a normal consequence of dying body cells
• after being absorbed out of purines from your daily diet.

Normally the uric acid will be dissolved in the blood and pass into the urine through your kidneys. What causes gout are the excess uric acid crystals that build up in the joints and cause inflammation.

Any gout cause is further related to gender, age, genetics, weight, medications, health, diet and alcohol consumption.

What foods cause gout

Any gout treatment diet will tell you to avoid the following high purine foods that cause gout:

• anchovies
• beer
• brains
• clams
• fish eggs
• goose
• grain alcohol
• gravy
• heart
• herring
• kidney
• liver
• lobster
• mackerel
• meat based bouillon, broth, consomme
• meat extract
• minced meat
• mussel
• oyster
• partridge
• sardines
• scallop
• shrimp
• sweetbread

Go easy on the following moderate purine foods that cause gout:

• asparagus
• dried beans, dried peas
• fish (and avoid the fish in the above list)
• lentils
• meat (and avoid the fish in the above list)
• mushroom
• spinach

Summarized: a gout diet avoids foods that cause gout

Causes for gout are mainly to be found in food and are further influenced by your health, genetics and lifestyle.

A gout diet based on low purine foods consists generally out of low-fat dairy products, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, nuts and grains. Make sure not to go on any crash diet, as loosing weight fast will increase the amount of uric acid in your body and trigger gout attacks. Keep track of your uric acid levels in your blood at least twice a year.

Purine rich vegetables and moderate wine drinking is not as harmful to gout sufferers as once believed. It pays off to keep a gout diet diary so you can learn from experience which foods cause gout for you.

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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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What is gout

Maybe you do know what is gout but you just don’t know that it is called gout: not all gout symptoms occur on your big toe…

Myself it took me quite a lot of doctor visits in different countries to learn that the arthritis in my left index finger that came and went actually was caused by gouty arthritis after 1 doctor examined the fluid taken out of my joint (called "synovial fluid") and discovered the uric acid crystals. Do know that I had injured the affected joint about 20 years ago.

More than 5 million people in the United States live with gout. In Europe it’s called a rich men’s disease… Since I don’t consider myself rich at all, it took me quit a while to find out the painful attacks in my finger where called gout attacks. To make the best out of a bad situation, I share my research about gout, gout symptoms, gout causes and cures of gout on this site.

Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis in men between 40 and 50 and it affects approximately 3 times as many men as women. Myself I got my first gout attack when I was about 42. The number of newly diagnosed gout cases is on the rise.

What is it about gout being a rich men’s disease?

Hippocrates called gouty arthritis “the disease of kings”. Gout was associated with a rich diet of rich people.

One of the cures that help preventing gout is to avoid food rich on purines found mainly in beer and certain meat and fish.

Gout pain

Gout pain is extremely painful, some say it is even more painful than giving birth. Gout pain, also known as gout attacks or gout flares feels like somebody is poking your joints from the inside with a huge needle.

This description describes the cause of gout attacks: needle-like uric acid crystals are deposited in connective tissue and/or in the fluids cushioning your painful joint.

These needle crystals are actually uric acid crystals, a substance produced when the body breaks down purines found in human tissue and many foods we eat.

We will elaborate more about uric acid and food that contain purines on our other pages.

Normally, the kidneys eliminate uric acid from the body in the urine. But when the kidneys don’t manage to do this, uric acid will build up in the blood which is hyperuricemia. At this stage you don’t have uric acid needles yet though!

A gout attack usually starts with a sudden, severe pain in the large joint of the big toe. With me it occurs in my left index. This attack will fade away after 3 to 10 days. According to your gout food and gout diet, the next gout
attack maybe is due for a few months or even a few years.

If gout symptoms are not treated well, gout attacks will become more severe, occur more often, last longer and affect more than one joint. That’s why you need to follow one of the many gout treatments available to keep your gout under control or prevent it from returning.

I would say I keep my fingers crossed never to get a gout attack again, but in my case my gout finger already looks a bit crossed without having to make any effort…

What is severe gout

Severe gout or chronic tophaceous gout is the worst stage of gout causing so much damage to the joints that they will get disabeled. Luckily there are enough remedies for gout to control your gout symptoms in an acceptable manner. Do read more about gout prevention in the 4 gout stages post.

Treating gout and home remedies for gout

After popping up some Celebrex pain killers and putting ice on my foot, I stumbled upon lots of other real treatments to battle gout, especially what you need is a gout treatment that prevents future attacks and make life much more enjoyable!

Gout treatments are categorized as:

• medication and gout remedies to deal with acute gout pain
• medication for gout prevention: lowering the uric acid level in your blood or increasing your kidney’s potential to excrete uric acid
• gout diet to reduce your purine intake : avoiding foods that cause gout
• gout diet to increase your excrement of urine acid (or " good gout food")
• homeopathic remedies for gout and home remedies for gout

To learn more about what is gout, gout symptoms and treating gout, please browse around on our site or ask your gout questions.

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