Struggling with Gout; Remedies and Prevention

My first experience with gout was in the Philippines where I stay yearly to escape Virginia’s dreary winters. I usually ate fish and fruits and I managed to lose some weight due to having more exercise and eating a lower carbohydrate diet. At first I thought it was my shoes that were causing for my foot pain, but replacing them didn’t solve the problem. The pain in my foot returned and worsened each year. My doctor diagnosed me with having inadequate arch support and gave me inserts for my shoes. After that, whenever I had an attack I assumed I was not being good enough about wearing my arch support. It never occurred to me that I had gout.

After moving to Baguio, my foot pain occurrence became more frequent. I learned that many people in Baguio got similar symptoms and they said it was gout. After researching about the ailment, I got convinced that my painful foot episodes were the result of gout attacks. Just to be really sure, I took a blood examination and confirmed that there's a high levels of uric acid present in my blood.

As you may now know, gout is caused by high levels of uric acid in the blood that forms crystals, usually in or near joints. Hands and feet are the most common place that these crystals form and in my case, they formed next to my big toe which makes walking almost impossible for me. The long thin crystals act like blades and cut into the bone and tissue which make even a slight touch on the spot can cause intense pain. And because uric acid is not very soluble in water, it is difficult to get the crystals to dissolve. Frequent attacks can cause long term damage to the joints and tissue.

The prevalence of gout meant that everyone had a lot of sympathy for me that they recommend their favorite remedy for the problem. Some recommendations were very helpful.
Most suggested that I drink lots of water to flush out the acid, but that doesn’t help once an attack had started. Another suggestion is to eat cherries or drink unsweetened black cherry juice which contains elements that dissolves uric acid. Drinking cherry juice especially the concentrated juice did really help in gout remedy, but it didn’t stop me from having attacks.

One popular gout cure I found on the Internet was taking two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar daily that contained the “mother”. The “mother” turned out to be the bacteria that created the vinegar in the form of a cloud of brown stuff at the bottom of the jar. People on the internet had reported substantial relief in a matter of hours after taking this and so I choked down three tablespoons. It reduced the swelling and gout pain within a few hours and so I kept taking it several times a day. Though it helped shorten the attack, it didn’t stop my attacks.

My doctor gave me the list of gout causing foods to be avoided, but I was already eating foods that were considered fine. Many people also claim that cheese is an anti-gout food so I added more cheese to my diet. Chicken, turkey, and fish were not considered problem foods but many people said that eating any meat can give more attacks. But I heard stories of vegetarians that had terrible gout attacks, so I wondered how related eating meat was to the problem.

As gout becomes more prevalent nowadays, many health professionals speculate that the increase in gout is being caused by American diet making their bodies highly acidic. They claim that coffee, high protein diets, alcohol, soft drinks, and other highly acidic foods contribute to the problem and that gout is just one of the many negative health outcomes that result from it.

My gout attacks often started on heavy VOG days and others seemed to have attacks at the same time. In order to keep my body more ph neutral, I started eating foods that were high in alkaline, like agave syrup (in replace of sugar), papayas, and bananas. I drank alkaline bottled water from the local health food store and noticed that it made me feel better.

I also learned that the high levels of calcium in drinking water can cause gout attacks because the high mineral content makes it harder to dissolve and remove uric acid from the body. In Virginia, I own a reverse osmosis water system so I started drinking bottled water created by the reverse osmosis process as this removes most of the minerals in the water.

When I researched about food with high levels of uric acid contents, I was surprised to see Canola oil show up. Canola (Canada oil low acid) is a hybrid of rapeseed oil which has been considered inedible by humans due to its large percentage of uric acid. Several versions of the rapeseed were propagated within the last ten years and it has now become a huge crop worldwide. The seed oil is now one of the most common oils used in food and the remaining plant is used as animal feed for cows, chickens, and turkeys. Canola oil is used to baste turkeys and chickens and much of the meat from American and Asian animals are fed feed created from rapeseed.

This made me decide to eliminate Canola oil and meats that might have been fed rapeseed feed from my diet. I only eat local grass-fed beef and fish. I avoid any prepared foods with Canola oil and I use unrefined olive oil and rice bran oil for cooking. It's been my routine to check the labels to make sure that a product that didn’t have Canola oil in it previously, still does not contain it. And I'm still on struggle to remove chicken and turkey from my diet as they seem to be in everything.

Since I started avoiding all rapeseed based meat and foods, and switched to alkaline and reverse osmosis drinking water, I have not had any gout attack in 16 months. I still continue to drink cherry juice concentrate and minimize foods and drinks intake that can increase my acidity level. I feel that my health has continuously improved and have been feeling comfortable taking long walks and hill climbing as my exercise.

I understand that my gout was not caused by any particular thing but a combination of changes in the global food supply, high acidity, my genetic predisposition, my diet, age, and my overall health. I hope that the many changes I have made will continue to keep me gout free while also allowing me to lose weight and get into shape.

by Robert Fitzgerald
Baguio City, Philippines