Healing Information

Gout Healing Diet - Uric Acid DiagramMost gout attacks occur suddenly at night without any warning. During an attack, the effected area becomes hot, swollen and extremely tender. Once razor-sharp particles form around the joint in the foot or ankle the pain can become so intense that most people cannot walk, put on their shoes, or even allow the bed sheets to touch the injured area. While many gout attacks occur in the big toe, they can also occur in the fingers, wrist and elbow.

In a typical gout attack, an excessive amount of uric acid settles in the joint and turns into razor-sharp crystals. Once this occurs, your body will send pro-inflammatory hormones to cause swelling. Once your immune system recognizes the problem, it will coat the razor-sharp particles with a protein that forms a compound called tophi. Instead of allowing the body several months to dissolve the crystals, most people will continue using the joint, causing more damage and increased inflammation. From this point forward, it’s usually a vicious cycle of pain, swelling and frustration.

Because the pain from a gout attack can be incredibly intense, most people will limp to their doctor’s office looking for a magic pill to make all their problems go away. Instead of addressing the root cause of the problem, most doctors will commit their patients to a life-long treatment plan of drugs. The pharmaceutical industry’s first choice for treating gout is a painkiller called Indomethacin that works like Ibuprofen. Although this drug may relieve some of the pain, if taken over a prolonged period of time, this drug will destroy a person’s liver.

Other drugs doctors like prescribing for gout include Colcrys, which is used as an anti-inflammatory agent. Probalan is used to help a patient’s body excrete more uric acid. Allopurinol, Febuxostat and Probenecid are used to decrease a patient’s uric acid levels. All of these drugs come with serious side effects and none of them address the root cause to the problem.

Preventing Gout Attacks

The first step in the healing process is to understand how a gout attack works so that you can permanently eliminate them from your life. We know that gout is caused by an excessive amount of uric acid that settles in the joint, but why is there an excessive amount of uric acid in a person’s body? One simple explanation is consuming too many purines. Purines can be found in the nucleus of plant and animal cells. They are comprised of carbon and nitrogen and are the essential building blocks (DNA) of all living things. Some foods contain higher amounts of purines than others. For example, 100 grams of yeast contains 1,200 mg of purines, while 100 grams of sweet cherries only contain 8 mg of purines.

The following chart offers an example of the purine content in foods based on a 100-gram serving.          

Tuna Fish


When a person consumes food with a large amount of purines, the liver breaks down the components into a waste product (known as uric acid) and releases the uric acid into the blood stream. Once the uric acid is released into the blood stream, it travels throughout the body until it’s filtered out by the kidneys. A person’s kidneys works like a sophisticated trash collector that removes waste products from the blood and excretes them in our urine.

One option in preventing a future gout attack is to stop eating foods that are high in purines. Although this option may seem simple enough, it should not be your only consideration for eliminating gout and it will not reduce the pain or discomfort caused by the inflammation surrounding a damaged joint.

Supporting Your Liver & Kidneys

Gout Healing Diet - Gout Attack RecoveryAnother consideration for eliminating a future gout attack would be to stop drinking alcohol. Although beer and wine may be relatively low in purines (in comparison to beef liver) your body’s desire to remove this poisonous substance will place an unnecessary burden on your liver and kidneys, and this is why many people experience a gout attack a few days after drinking.

When a person drinks alcohol, his or her body’s top priority is to remove the poisonous substance. Flooding the bloodstream with alcohol places the kidneys under increased stress and forces them to make a difficult decision—should they focus their efforts on removing alcohol from the blood before it destroys more brain cells, or should they continue reducing uric acid levels so that it doesn’t settle in the joints and cause another gout attack?

In the event that you have a healthy liver and kidneys, maybe they can accomplish both tasks at the same time, but in the event that your liver and kidneys are getting old and are constantly tired from removing an endless supply of uric acid, pesticides, preservatives, plastics, pharmaceutical drugs, along with every other kind of toxin that's being added to our food and water supply, then maybe your kidneys cannot handle both tasks at the same time, and if that’s the case, you may want to give your internal organs a rest.

The best way to accomplish this is to drink at least three quarts of purified water everyday—maybe more if you live in a dry climate. A gallon of distilled water from a glass container every 24 hours would be the optimal preference. An abundance of purified water every day will help your body flush toxins, keep your joints lubricated and offer support to your internal organs.

Avoiding Excessive Exercise & Crash Diets

The other source of purines that has the potential to cause a gout attack comes from inside our bodies. In the past gout was thought to be the king’s disease because it's usually caused from an excessive diet of rich foods and alcohol, but that’s not always the case. Only a third of our uric acid comes from our diets while the rest is manufactured by our bodies when they recycle dead cells. Because every cell in our body contains purines, when the body breaks down old cells, the liver converts those purines into uric acid.

It is for this reason that you can experience a gout attack by fasting for a prolonged period of time, or by experiencing rapid weight loss, or by going on a crash diet. When a person doesn’t eat food for a few days, their body will start burning fat for fuel. In the event that the body needs additional protein to support more critical functions (like its internal organs) it will release an enzyme that will start decreasing muscle mass.

When this occurs, the recycled tissue will be broken down into amino acids, and during this process, the liver will need to process an unusually high amount of purines. In the event that all the uric acid is not properly excreted through the urine (with the assistance of drinking a lot of purified water), it’s possible to wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in one of your joints.

Other situations where your body can give itself a case of gout comes from physical injury or excessive exercise. When a person engages in physical exercise, they are breaking down muscle mass so that those muscles can be rebuilt bigger and stronger a few days later. During this process, the liver will need to process more purines than usual, and if all those waste products are not excreted by the kidneys, it’s possible to develop a case of gout.

The same concept also applies to being overweight and physical injury. In the event that someone is involved in a car crash and experiences a lot of tissue damage, their body will need tear down and rebuild million of cells. During this reconstruction process, the liver will be required to process a heavy workload of purines, and if the kidneys do not remove all that uric acid, it’s possible to experience the unpleasant consequences. In the same way, being overweight also increases a person’s risk of gout because of the excessive amount of unnecessary tissue (millions of cells) that needs to be constantly maintained and regenerated on a regular basis.

Understanding Gout & Inflammation

Living in the Garden of Eden

The next step in the healing process is to understand the difference between a gout attack and inflammation. After the initial gout attack, your body will coat the razor-sharp particles with a protein that forms a compound called tophus. This process occurs relatively quickly, usually within a few days. After all the razor-sharp particles have been coated, the excruciating pain will decrease, but the swelling and discomfort may continue for many months because your body still needs to dissolve the crystals and repair the damaged joint.

One way to tell the difference between a gout attack and the pain of inflammation is by going to bed at night. If during the day your joint is red, swollen and painful, but feels better in the morning, it’s a good indicator that the initial gout attack is over and that your body is in the process of repairing the damaged joint. It’s important during this time to be patient with the healing process because it can take up to a year for a person’s body to completely dissolve all the crystals. Those who have experienced multiple gout attacks and have many years of built-up layers of tophus around the joint, may want to consider longer healing times.

The good news is that if you can successfully control the amount of purines that you consume, eliminate the consumption of alcohol and drink a lot of purified water—so that you never again experience another buildup of uric acid crystals in your joints—it means that you don’t have gout! If one of your joints is still red, swollen and hurting several months after an initial gout attack, you can always expedite the healing process through five simple steps.

The five simple steps that will decrease inflammation and expedite your body's healing process are described in a 192-page book entitled Living in the Garden of Eden. You can purchase a copy of this book for $9.99 with free shipping within the United States. Your purchase will also help support this ministry.

At this point, you have a choice to make. You can continue limping through life, taking the doctor’s drugs and allowing your health to slowly deteriorate, or you can fight back, address the root cause of the problem and experiencing the health and healing that you truly desire.