My first gout attack came when I was just shy of age 50. One day I was out working in the garden, enjoying one of my favorite activities. And the next day, out of the blue, I woke up with classic gout pain and swelling in my big toe. The toe was so painful that, just as the books say, even the weight of a bedsheet on it seemed unbearable. I could hardly walk.

My doctor gave me a prescription drug that flushes pain-causing uric acid crystals from the body. I took the medicine like the good patient that I am whenever I'm faced with pain. And I quickly went from being an invalid who could barely walk to being back on my feet and puttering in my herb garden once again. With all due respect for the prescription drug, however, I'm glad that I've found an herbal replacement that seems to do the trick.

Gout is a form of arthritis because it causes pain in the joints, usually the big toe, although other joints can be affected. It's caused by a buildup of uric acid in the blood. When levels rise beyond a certain point, uric acid crystals form and collect in the affected joint or joints, causing excruciating pain. These crystals can also form in the body's major organs and do considerable damage, so avoiding pain is not the only reason to keep this serious condition under control.

Gout tends to run in families. Three hundred years ago, it was associated with wealth, because gout attacks were thought to be provoked by eating a rich diet. Now we know that the disease afflicts rich and poor alike. More than 95 percent of people who have gout are men over 30. An estimated 10 to 20 percent of the population has elevated uric acid levels, but only 3 people in 1,000 experience gout.

Uric acid is a waste product derived from the breakdown of an amino acid called purine. Normally, uric acid is dissolved in the blood and eliminated from the body by the kidneys. But for some reason for some, uric acid builds up in the joints. Researchers have found that avoiding purine-rich foods can help alleviate gout. Foods with the most purine are meats, especially organ meats, and yeast-laden baked goods. Also avoid gravies and broths, sardines, mussels, herring, mushrooms, dried beans, fish, lentils, peas, alcohol,   oatmeal and spinach.

 

Over 40 years ago, Texan Ludwig W. Blau, Ph.D., made a discovery that to this day ripples through many nutritional journals and books about gout.  Crippled, confined to a wheelchair and suffering from gout, Blau one day wheeled himself to the cupboard. Seeing nothing appetizing, he turned to refrigerator, spied a bowlful of plump, red cherries, sampled them, and, hooked, ate the bowlful. The next morning, wonder of wonders, the pain and inflammation in his foot were almost gone. Blau's family physician tried the therapy on 12 patients. Every one of them saw improvement. Dr. Blau reported in Texas Reports on Biology and Medicine that, following a non-restricted diet of one half pound of fresh or canned cherries per day, all 12 gout sufferers saw their blood uric acid levels return to normal, with no further attacks gout.

Natural Help for Gout

If you have gout, by all means take the medication that your doctor prescribes. But in addition, you might want to try some natural approaches to relieving this painful ailment.

 

FOODS

Celery (Apium graveolens). Learning that celery extracts might help eliminate uric acid, I began taking two to four tablets of celery seed extracts daily instead of allopurinol. As I write, six months have gone by without a single gout crisis. For one week, I ate four celery stalks a day in lieu of the extracts. These self-dosing anecdotal results lead me to believe the advertisement that led me to the celery seed. A skeptic then, I'm a believer now: Celery seed (or serendipity) has kept my uric acid below critical levels.

 

Avocado (Persea americana). My botanical friends in the Amazon believe that avocado is useful for treating gout. It reportedly lowers uric acid levels in the blood. There's no scientific evidence that I'm aware of to support this assertion, but I have a lot of respect for the herbal wisdom of the Amazonian people, and avocados are certainly tasty. So here's a good reason to add an occasional avocado to your diet. Just don't go overboard, though, as avocados are high in calories.

Cherry (Prunus, various species). Many people claim to stave off gout attacks by eating eight ounces a day of canned or fresh cherries. I have one friend, for instance, who claims to have great luck in staving off gout when he eats black cherries. This therapy has never been scientifically demonstrated to work, but since so many people swear by it, I think it's probably worth trying. (One caveat, though: Buying this many cherries might be even more expensive than my allopurinol.) Other people favor strawberries. I'm going to give my Cherry Cocktail a try. It's a mixture of cherry, pineapple, strawberry and blueberry juices spiced up with a little bit of licorice and a lot of ginger and turmeric.

Pineapple (Ananas comosus). Pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that helps break down protein. Naturopathic physicians often recommend pure bromelain, which can be purchased at health food stores, to reduce inflammation and swelling. Bromelain clearly works if you inject it into swollen tissue, but the effectiveness of the ingested enzyme has been controversial. It's probably worth trying, however. My preferred way to get bromelain is in an occasional glass of pineapple juice.

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