Reducing gout flare-ups.

I have never been a big fan of herbal medicine.  Don't get me wrong, I believe there is a great deal Mother Nature has in her storehouse that does us a lot of good. Many of our modern medicines are either entirely extracted from naturally occurring substances or are modified somehow to enhance properties or reduce side effects.  But still, I do not often use them.  

That is, until I had gout.

Gout is a metabolic disease associated with arthritis.  Uric acid is naturally produced in your body from the metabolism of purines.  It is removed by your kidneys and leaves your body as urine; if you notice a similarity between uric acid and urine, that's because one begets the other.  But sometimes the uric acid in your blood is not removed at the same rate it builds up.  

It turns out that uric acid does not dissolve well in water-based fluids like plasma.  Once saturation has been reached, it starts to crystalize out, the same way you get salt crystals forming on a string in a super-saturated salt solution.  Except that, in your body, that place tends to be joints.

Crystals tend to have sharp edges.  Once a crystal starts to form it grows larger because the resulting lattice is easily added onto.  And so the crystals get larger and larger and, over time, start to affect the surrounding tissue.  The result is swelling, redness, and let's not forget pain.

Although I have heard that kidney stones are considered extremely painful, even surpassing childbirth (fortunately, I have had neither), I understand that gout ranks up in the stratosphere of pain measure.  It depends on where it is and the severity of it, but to say that it stings is perhaps the world's greatest understatement.  

I had my first attack of gout perhaps 12 years ago.  I thought I had bruised my heel somehow and ended up on crutches for a week.  The second time it happened led me to my doctor; the blood test told her the whole story.  I had gout.  "Easy peasy," she said, "Just take 6 of these white pills (colchicine) over two days and it will be gone."  And it was.  Just like that.  Magic!

I had gout attacks once or twice a year for probably ten years and the colchicine did a miraculous job of banishing the demon.  But last year, something changed.  I would have a gout attack, take my pills, and a few days later another would follow.  After eight or so attacks I knew I had to do something.  There are medicines that you can take daily that will keep gout under control, but they had side effects.  Then my friend told me about cherry extract pills.

What?  Natural medicine - something prescribed by a witch doctor perhaps - what utter nonsense.  Or so I thought.  But, who was I to argue with his experience, and the cost to try it was minimal.  Besides, cherry extract has the added benefit of vitamins and minerals as well.  There was little to lose.

I take two cherry extract pills a day, one in the morning and one at night.  They are big, horse-pills I call them, but they seem to work.  I have been on them for over a month now and have not had an attack.  Three times I thought I felt the beginning twinges of something coming on, but then it went away each time.  That had never happened before.  Maybe there was something to this after all.

For now, it is part of my new regimen.  I will continue to take them until something tells me otherwise.  I do not expect this to work forever, but it seems to be the ticket for now.  And I still have my colchicine prescription should it be warranted.  

Mother Nature cures gout.  Who knew?

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com