Dr. Joseph Mercola: Hi. This is Doctor Mercola. Today I’d like to talk to you a little bit about gout. Why? Because there’s a good chance that you or someone you love is affected by this condition. So just what is gout? Well, it’s an arthritic type of pain in your joints. Typically, about seventy-percent of the time, it’s in your big toe. So if you have this acute excruciating type of pain in your big toe, you’re going to want to be checked for gout.
Gout is usually a result of the precipitation of uric acid and the formation of crystals in your joints. The body typically- the pain isn’t a result of the actually crystals themselves, but the bodies response to the crystals. Most of the time, of course, the pain is so severe that you’re going to want to go on some type of pain reduction medication, typically an anti-inflammatory, and that’s appropriate because the pain can be pretty intense. But you’re going to want to address the cause. Of course the traditional approach is to put people on medications which lower the uric acid levels, decreases the likelihood of precipitation of the uric acid crystals in the joints, and that’s what I want to caution you about because these drugs, like allopurinol or zyloprim or colchicines, are potentially very dangerous and have lots of long term side effects and it clearly should be avoided if at all possible.
So, why not try natural approaches? And that’s what I’d like to talk to you about. There are some simple basic strategies that you can use. One of them is to eat the foods that you are designed to eat, the foods that are designed for your specific biochemistry and metabolism. The best way that you can do this is to undergo and process that’s called nutritional typing because it will tell you if need high amounts of fat and protein and low carbs, or the converse which is high amounts of carbs and low fat, low protein or somewhere in the middle.
Additionally, you’re going to want to eliminate as much sugar as possible because there is some very strong evidence, especially in the last few years, that by eliminating the sugars you can reduce the risk of gout recurrence by eighty-five percent. Sugar is, of course, the number one source of calories in the U.S. in the form of high fructose corn syrup and sodas, so stay away from any sugary drinks and processed foods as long as you’re going in that direction.
In addition, another dietary modification that’s especially important is to cut down or eliminate the use of alcohol because alcohol is clearly another risk factor in gout. Exercise will be another phenomenal component. Exercise has so many benefits, it’s one of those pervasively good things to do, just like optimizing your Vitamin D levels, it’s really crucial. Of course you don’t want to exercise an acutely inflamed joint that’s causing pain because that’s going to potentially cause joint damage, but once your can exercise without pain then clearly doing a regular program is going to be very helpful at normalizing your uric acid levels, and it primarily does this through optimization of insulin levels.
A simple supplemental approach is the use of tart cherries because cherries for some strange reason seem to be very useful in the treatment of gout. But you want to be careful because the FDA has deemed this indication, this claim, to actually make it a drug. Actually, there have been companies who have been sued successfully and have their product line confiscated by the FDA because they were bold enough to say that cherries can be used to treat gout.
So clearly these are some strategies that you can use overall to treat this very painful condition, but the key is to stay away from those dangerous drugs because those drugs can cause havoc in your life. Typically, gout is a lifelong condition in most traditional viewpoints, so you have to stay on these drugs for long periods of time. So hopefully this will help you or someone you love with this condition.
Lecture by Dr. Joseph Mercola
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