Gout Causes

Gout is a form of arthritis and a nightmare, if you have ever had you know what I mean. Usually gout effects the big toe joint in men but has made appearances in woman as well. Tiny uric acid crystals form into needle like spears that get lodged in your joints but always seems to end up in the foot with other areas affected including the ankle, sometimes knee and is also extremely painful. Some people suffer from this all over their body and for some reason Pacific Islanders are more susceptible to gout, my 27 year old friend Richard in Hawaii had to spend time in the hospital for a gout attack that was in almost in every joint in his body and this was not the first time, Richard’s condition is hereditary like his father before him and down the line.

Diet and heredity do play a major part, if one has a high level of uric acid in the blood chances are they can develop gouty arthritis because the uric acid is not being expelled properly by the body. The joke is that only rich people get it because of all the fancy foods they eat like duck, liver, liquors, and cheesecakes. There are many famous people in history who have suffered from gout.

What is the best gout treatment?  There is either home remedies, homeopathic treatments and of course tradition modern medicine. A flare up may only occur once or twice in a lifetime due to poor diet like red meats, alcohol, and shellfish just to name a few so if that’s the case and you watch your diet than it won’t be a problem again. Others have chronic gout like yours truly and needs to keep a close eye on what I eat as well as what remedies work for me because there is a lot of trial and error in treating this nasty painful condition.

Some home remedies include consuming black cherries, black cherry juice concentrate, and a nauseating concoction of apple cider vinegar with baking soda, this may be wicked but it works wonders for a lot of people. There are also Chinese herbal supplements that work very well that include extracts from black cherries, blueberries, celery, etc.

A Doctor may prescribe colchicine to knock out the gout during an attack and tell you to cut back on fatty foods, red meats, and alcohol, basically all the favorite foods that are now bad for you. A steroid or cortisone shot to the the effected joint is given when the gout just wont let up. If you keep getting flare ups the Doctor may also prescribe allopurinol which is the most popular drug to keep gout from reoccurring via lowering your uric acid count.

My story is that the gout kept coming back no matter what I did and some remedies did work but lost its potency after time so switching to another treatment was an option, thankfully there are a lot of options for treating gout.

As you can see there are in fact many treatment options and since gout is tricky to treat you may have to experiment a little because sometimes the modern medicine your doctor prescribes may not even dent the condition and a few home remedies will knock it out completely.

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