If you’ve been following my radio show and my work across the internet, you’ll know that my main motivation is to empower people to not only take responsibility for their own health but also provide natural treatments that they can do at home.
So when it comes to a home treatment for gout this was easy to write about mostly because…
my dad has had on and off occurrences of gout ever since I can remember. He’d complain that the pain was so bad that he couldn’t sleep at night. Usually the gout would last for a few nights. During that time he’d complain that he got no sleep.
This was a real issue because it wasn’t like he was an office worker, he drove trucks for 11 hours a day on the freeway. If he fell asleep, he could get into a car crash and literally die.
Getting no sleep because of gout was a big deal for us.
Back then, we had no understanding of what causes gout or the dangers of common medications that he was on like…
- Allopurinol (Zyloprim) or febuxostat
- Colchicine
- Corticosteroids
- Probenecid (Benemid, Benuryl, and others)
- Sulfinpyrazone (Anturane)
- NSAIDs
Perhaps one day I could do a deep dive into each of these gout medications and how they’re harmful to your health. But that’s not going to be the focus of this article.
We do know that all drugs will harm your liver (which has 500 functions and is arguably the most important organ in your body).
And we know that when people take the prescribed medication, in the right dosage, for the right duration of time for the right condition, still 440,000 per year die from this. So don’t think that medications have no side effects.
In other words, the standard of care that doctors must follow kills hundreds of thousand of people per year by doing everything correctly. This doesn’t involve mistakes, overdoses, botched surgeries etc.
So my goal is to offer you a home treatment for gout that you can try first to see if it works. If it does, I’ve just saved you a trip to your doctor! And I’ve saved your liver from being poisoned by medications. And (hopefully) I’ve been able to share some key ideas so you can prevent gout attacks in the future.
Win/Win/Win!
But first let’s talk about…
What Is Gout?
Gout is a interesting type of acute joint pain that occurs when uric acid, naturally found in your body, crystallizes in your joints. Normally, uric acid dissolves and serves as an antioxidant. But when levels spike, it can crystallize, particularly in the joint of your big toe (which was the case with my dad), causing intense pain and inflammation because the uric acid crystals are really sharp!
Back in the 19th century, doctors noticed that patients with chronic gout often felt better when they went to mineral springs that contained….drum roll please….. lithium. Research later confirmed that lithium could make uric acid more soluble, and this would prevent it from crystallizing.
There’s a really important paper called The History of Lithium Therapy and here’s a snippet from that article below.
The history of lithium is a little bit like that of the man who ate the first oyster. Lithium has been in medical use—including psychiatric use—for many years. Many mineral springs contain lithium, among other elements, and some of them, such as Mineral Wells in Texas, have age-old reputations as “crazy waters”. In 1847, London internist Alfred Baring Garrod discovered uric acid in the blood of gouty patients. Garrod made the lithium treatment of gout—including “brain gout” —widely known in his 1859 work, The Nature and Treatment of Gout and Rheumatic Gout, and subsequent editions (4). Amdi Amdisen and F. N. Johnson have recently reviewed lithium’s early history. By the 1930s, a number of lithium-containing products were on the market, mostly indicated for the control of renal calculi and the “uric acid diathesis.” For example, in 1939, the German pharmaceutical index, The Red List (Die Rote Liste), featured “Lithosanol Bauer,” a combination product of lithium citrate and several other components for kidney, bladder, and gallstones.
Lithium for the win!
But….
Then in the 1970s, researchers cautioned against high doses of vitamin C because it could lead to an increase in uric acid excretion through urine, which lowers blood levels and potentially leads to kidney stones.
Uh oh!
Interestingly, this is similar to how Probenecid™ (aka Probalan), a gout medication still used today, works—it helps your kidneys flush out uric acid, lowering its concentration in your blood and lessening the chances of it crystallizing in your joints.
It turns out they were demonizing vitamin c because they had just come out with a competing product.
Shocking how that works.
In so many cases with drugs, we find that the side effects cause the very condition itself. According to WikiPedia Probenecid causes…
Life-threatening side effects such as thrombocytopenia, hemolytic anemia, leukemia and encephalopathy are extremely rare. Theoretically probenecid can increase the risk of uric acid kidney stones.
Now we have a conflict of interests going on here, which explains all the censorship. If people knew that simple low doses of lithium and vitamin c could be an effective home treatment for gout, then “they” (meaning the drug companies) could stand to lose millions of dollars per year.
From these insights, a simple regimen of 5 milligrams of lithium orotate and 1-2 grams of vitamin C, both taken twice daily, can often prevent gout attacks. If this combination isn’t enough on its own, it can at least help reduce the amount of conventional medication you might need.
Since the 1970s, we’ve known that low doses of lithium don’t cause toxicity; tests always show low lithium blood levels.
Gout Statistics
According to the Lancet, roughly 3.9% of adults or 8.3 million adults suffer with gout. In 2020 globally that was about 55.8 million adults had gout. And get this…gout is on the rise globally. By 2050 instead of there being 55.8 million gout sufferers there will be 95.8 million.
In other words gout will be increasing by roughly 72% in the next 30 years.
What’s odd is that majority of gout sufferers are male. The same but opposite holds true with autoimmune diseases. The majority of adults who have them are women.
With gout on the rise, let’s talk about some home treatments for gout because I hate to see people suffer.
When my dad had gout off and on over the years, it really pained me to see how much pain he was in. It was in his toe and he couldn’t walk. He’d limp for 3 or 4 days. The joint on his big toe was so painful that he couldn’t put shoes or socks on. He couldn’t even have a bedsheet touch the knuckle joint of his big toe while he was in bed.
If he got gout in the Winter that means his feet were cold trying to sleep, which would keep him up all night.
It’s one thing to learn about home remedies for gout but it’s another to find out what’s causing it so we can stop participating in the cause.
What Causes Gout?
If you look online you’ll see some of the reasons below for what causes gout. I always question the mainstream narrative with anything. But regardless here’s what “they” say causes gout…
- Being male
- Alcohol consumption
- Obesity
- Eating a meat based diet high in purines (see below)
- Drinking sugary drinks – leads to hyperuricemia.
- Being over 65
- Having high blood pressure
- Having chronic kidney disease
- High cholesterol
- Diabetes
- Coronary heart disease
None of these conditions actually cause gout but they’re “associated” with gout. That just means that the same biological breakdown or toxic overload in the body is going to manifest in multiple conditions, gout being one of them.
I know plenty of people over 65 that don’t get gout. I also know men with high blood pressure that have never had gout. These conditions are just associated but not the real cause.
According to my research, the reason why your body cannot effectively get rid of uric acid crystals (and prevent their formation) is because a lack of energy. Energy (adenosine triphosphate ATP) is created in complex 4 of your mitochondria called cytochrome c-oxidase.
In other words, gout is a mitochondrial condition that prevents you from making enough energy to deal with the symptoms.
Dietary Recommendations
During an acute gout flare up, I personally would avoid foods like alcohol, sugar, dairy, wheat, soy, processed foods, refined carbohydrates and eggs.
High purine foods are foods like sardines, anchovies, liver, kidney, sweetbreads, red meat, some seafood. I’m not convinced from the research that high purine foods cause gout. But if you feel there’s a connection for you, you could consider omitting these foods from your diet for a week or so.
With that said…
We do know that uric acid is normally formed in the body as a by-product of purine metabolism. However, we now understand that a diet high in fructose also leads to higher production of uric acid.
Personally I would follow a paleo style diet for a week or so while I was taking the gout supplements listed below. None of this is medical advice, just what I would do as a home treatment for gout.
Cherries to the rescue!
A 2010 study by a US/UK research team noted that tart cherry juice reduced uric acid production by 38%.
Also…
There was a study on cherries and gout in The 2012 study Cherry consumption and decreased risk of recurrent gout attacks by Y. Zhang, T. Neogi, C. Chen, C. Chaisson, and N. Hunter, published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, found that cherry intake significantly reduced the risk of recurrent gout attacks in 633 patients over the course of a year – Source.
Adding cherries or tart cherry juice do your existing diet would be advisable.
Top 9 Gout Supplements
The top two gout supplements are going to be lithium and vitamin c taken together daily. If you cannot afford the other supplements on the list, just get these two because they have the most research behind them. What I love about this home treatment for gout is that you can read the review articles yourself and buy them yourself without going to a doctor.
That’s what I call self empowerment.
- Vitamin C (2,000 mg twice daily)
- Lithium (5–10 mg)
- High-dose daily multivitamin
- B-complex vitamins
- Curcumin (400–1,000 mg)
- Vitamin D (2,000–5,000 IU) – I only recommend getting vitamin D from the Sun first or a device. I’ll share more below.
- Resveratrol (100–200 mg)
- Phosphatidylserine (200–300 mg)
- Coenzyme Q10
I get the question all the time why I don’t recommend taking a vitamin D supplement. Here’s why below.
Conclusion
As I mentioned this is not medical advice and I am not a doctor. This is just my research and what I’ve found to be a rock solid home treatment for gout that seems to work the majority of the time. Always run what I say by a medical doctor (just be warned that they will not believe you and try to get you on drugs) if you feel so inclined.
Questions:
- Have you tried any home remedies for gout? Have they worked?
- How often do you get gout? What’s your diet like?
- What are the gout symptoms you experience? How bad is it?
Comment below!