If anyone happens to read this, if you or anyone you know is afflicted by gout, it is absolutely so painful you can't even think -

have someone get you some R.W. Knudsen Just Black Cherry juice (Whole Foods and various health food stores, Ralph's, Albertson's). . .start drinking it and it will take the heat out while you are waiting to see the doctor . . . but then you must change your way of eating to help avoid future attacks.

Gout is no joke.

I have had Arthritis since I was 10 years old (Believe it or not Arthritis is the third leading crippler of children). As a youngster I could barely walk. Doctors told me I would probably be wheelchair bound by my early twenties. My knees would swell so large that for several years I had to have them drained once a week.

Arthritis has associated eye diseases, Uveitis ravaged my eyes, the only thing that would stop it was steroid injection, directly INTO the eye. Those started when I was 12 or so, over the following 15 years I recieved those eyeball injections over 100 tmes.

The treatments, mostly high doses of steroids, gave me the bones of a 70 year old women at 35, and I had cataracts by the time I was 25.

Why do I lay this out? Just to show I'm no stranger to pain. And simply because I had no choice I developed a pretty high tolerance to it. It was a hard lesson to learn as a teenager but the only thing I had control over was my attitude. My life has been very blessed since that , God given, revelation.

After a hip replacement at 50 I realized that the periodic pains in my big toe were not normal arthritis but gout. So what, just, add it to the list.

It accelerated and now 2 years later I can tell you The pain of gout is above and beyond anything even I could imagine. You cannot walk, you cannot bear the pain of wearing socks, shoes are pure agony and even the weight of a sheet in bed is unbearable.

Gout is most assuredly no joke.

A prescription of Allopurinol keeps gout away.

Dr. Gott - an M.D. who has a newspaper column - recommends home remedies for this painful condition:
http://tinyurl.com/8nvtphx

Just wanted to say one other thing - women CAN get gout, but usually at a later age - they might not realize they have it because it doesn't occur to them they could have gout - sometimes hits the knee or elbow.

As a gout sufferer since my late 20's, I can attest to the pain from gout being excruciating. Nothing funny about it.

No escaping it once an attack hits either. Moving, the pain can be severe. Sitting still, it can go down to a low flame, but it doesn't go away.

I wouldn't wish gout on anyone...well...maybe a select few.

Gout is a form of arthritis. Another form is pseudogout that forms calcium pyrophosphate crystals in the joint. While cherry juice may prove helpful for uric acid gout - it does nothing for pseudogout.

Changes in diet will do nothing for pseudogout and the only help at all is from colchicine as other gout drugs do not work.

Painful? Hard to describe the constant pain where only looking at the joint seems to increase the pain - never mind touching it.

I've found that sodium naproxen and tylenol, taken together, will help with the pain while you're waiting for the allopurinol to work.

#3 is correct. I resisted for a long time, but have been on allopurinol for several years and have been attack free. No need to suffer if you don't have any conditions that would prevent you from taking it.

I mentioned to my doctor yesterday that when I was a kid, I laughed at all those "funny" commercials about iron poor blood, heartburn, hemorrhoids, etc. and how they've become less and less funny as I aged and started getting experience with some of them!

Drinking small amounts of apple cidar vinegar daily depletes calcium build up in the joints and bones aka arthritis. Grandma lived to be 88 and her doctor was AMAZED that she didn't have arthritis. Not a bit. She told him her secret and he looked at her like she was nuts!

#1
My family swore by SOUR Cherry juice.

Sold at health food stores, Turkish, Israeli,
and some Asian markets.

They also sell Sour Cheery pills, Jelly and Jams and dried sour cherries. [similar to dried cranberries]

Ditto #3

I used to be cursed with this condition and it is about the worst pain I have ever experienced. In my case I finally linked it to dehydration. I began drinking a lot of water each day and haven't been afflicted since. Anything that is dehydrating should be avoided. Search Google to find examples of things that dehydrate.

I forgot. Google Colcrys. It's also effective.

Gout can indeed affect both sexes,I remember my grandmother, a tea totalerer, having attacks.
My father and I got the genes for it and his kidneys finally gave out partly because of high uric acid levels.
The root of the disorder is a genetic inability to process purines, one of the four basic amino acid groups.Beans and red meat contain plenty of things to aggravate gout.

gout can hit a man who is thin, active, and eats a reasonable diet if he possesses the gene which leads to heart or artery problems. I know the family history of this.
My 'arthritic gout' in my big toe (on a good diet) occurs not when the foot is down but when it is up at night. So I can get relief by putting the foot down and walking it out. Nsaids work much better than Tylenol in order to sleep and a half tablet of hydroxycodone really gives relief when added. I'm lucky that by changing footwear I have been free for a year but the pain was excruciating indeed.

Nothing funny about it at all, I agree, and also have had attacks. Unbelievable pain.

I've mostly managed to control it with diet, but had a small attack recently apparently triggered by too much fruit, that I think may have freed up purines/uric acid I was otherwise coping with. I'd never heard of that before!

Otherwise, all my previous attacks had been associated with diet, too much meat, too much herring, too much hummus, dang garbanzo beans are on the bad list, someone should have told me! I've had maybe two small steaks in ten years. Grrrr.

Anyone who ever thought Gout was funny needs to be taken to the woodshed.

My father is a retired MD whose specialty was Rheumatology. He saw plenty of it during his time and it was never a joke.

Some people with such a sense of humor need a beat-down. THAT would be funny....

It's pretty obvious that Libs all suffer from Crainalgoutitis.