Naturally Rid Your Body of Joint Pain and Gout

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Chances are very good that you know someone, or perhaps you have experienced it yourself, who has suffered from gout, a type of arthritis. Although gout mainly affects men, it does affect women as well. Gout can lead to other painful conditions such as kidney stones. Gout, joint pain, and kidney stones are all caused due to a buildup of uric acid in the urine or bloodstream.

In the past, gout was actually laughed about as being a rich man’s disease, because in those days it generally affected those who had the money for rich foods and liquor. If you or anyone you know has experienced gout, you know that there is nothing funny about it. Some people describe it as being burned, while others say that they feel as if someone is piercing their joints with a hot poker.

With or without treatment, most episodes of gout will disappear on their own within 3 to 10 days. Another attack may not happen for months, or even years. However, if several attacks occur, they tend to become problematic since they increase in frequency, become more severe, and last longer each time. When this happens, gout can damage your joints and the surrounding tissue.

For this reason, you want to end a gout attack as quickly as possible and avoid them from recurring, before they cause real damage to your joints. Using natural means is always better than using drugs and they are more effective in the long run.

Gout usually happens after years of high levels of uric acid in the blood. Although this acid usually dissolves harmlessly into your blood and then out through the kidneys, sometimes the body makes too much uric acid or it excretes too little through the urine. This build up eventually forms crystals that are similar to needles in shape and they settle in the joints, causing intense pain.

This is why you don’t have any symptoms until you wake up in the middle of the night and your big toe is killing you! Why it generally starts there is a mystery, but that is just the start. Elevated levels of uric acid in the blood can lead to numerous other health conditions including:

Heart disease
High cholesterol
Diabetes
High blood pressure
Kidney disease

Although gout is usually blamed on the over consumption of alcohol and too many high-purine foods, such as asparagus, mushrooms, herring, anchovies, and organ meats, there is another culprit rarely mentioned: high fructose corn syrup. There have been numerous studies that show that HFCS is linked to a wide variety of health problems, including gout. In fact, one study done by a joint effort of Canadian and American researchers show that men who drank two or more sodas each day has an 85 percent high risk of developing gout than those who drank one soda a month or less (read more about dangers of drinking soda). It’s believed that this occurs because fructose inhibits uric acid from leaving the body. Another risk factor is obesity. Half of all gout patients are overweight.

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