Gout
For those of you who have it or know someone who does, you know just how painful it is. Gout is caused by a buildup of uric acid in the body and that acid crystallizes in the joints acting much like little daggers and feeling the same way. There are medicines to”treat” gout but they all have some pretty horrendous side affects, one such drug can cause your skin to slough off, or in my words, turn you into a zombie! So treating with drugs is rather risky in my mind. Some people find relief from the standard homeopathic things like cherries or cherry juice, but I found exactly zero relief from such things.
The things that cause gout to flare up for me are not the usual dietary things. For instance, the dietary guidelines talk about avoiding organ meats and herring as well as not eating too much meat in general. I fail on the third one (can’t eat wheat so I am rather limited) but the first two aren’t even in my diet (and I don’t eat hot dogs or bologna so I don’t get it there either.) For me, its drinking too much soda. But its not just that. If I switch from soda and go to my standby of Gatorade I get the same reaction, tho I do drink a lot more gatorade than I do of soda. Now nothing on the internet refers to such a connection and I have been assured by my doctor that there is no chemical reason for that as the sugar in those do not translate to uric acid. I believe my doctor but there has been an undeniable connection there for me.
So what does work? I found a so-called two-hour cure. The formula is really quite esoteric and outrageously expensive. Seriously! You have to drive to the nearest walmart to pick up a box of baking soda** (Cost: Approx. 50 cents) and then drive all the way home and mix 1/4 teaspoon with 8 ounces of water and drink that several times per day, never to exceed 4 tsps a day. Guess what? It works! Starts to take the pain and swelling away within 90 minutes for me. But why does that work? I did some searching and as near as I can tell there is no chemical reaction between backing soda and uric acid so it had to be elsewhere.
PH Level
Water has a pH of 7 but the body must maintain the blood’s pH level in a very strict range of 7.35-7.45. Its an incredibly small range with which to work and in order to keep this particular range it will do two things. 1) Store excess acid in body tissue 2) Leech calcium from the bones to bring up the pH. Now the standard western diet is already acidic but when you add in soda it becomes much worse. The linked site shows that Coke has a pH of 2.63 and Gatorade a pH of 2.95. So by drinking these in excess I have been bringing my pH level down. Likely down far enough to bring on a state of acidosis. I can’t prove that perhaps but it is likely seeing as my consumption of soda can be 3-6 cans a day and as I make my own Gatorade using the mix there is no telling just how much of that I drink. Of course, for some most people that isn’t a problem as their body is in proper working condition, but unfortunately I am apparently not one of them.
What I found is that baking soda has a PH of 8.3, whereas water has a neutral PH of 7. So by drinking in this 8.3 PH water mixture I am bringing up my bodies’ pH level from a state of acidosis to one approaching normal. This allows my body to take the acid and put it back in the bloodstream to be processed by the kidneys as it should be. But to be honest, I found the adding of baking soda to be tedious and tho it doesn’t taste bad at all it does make the water “slick” which is rather different. Plus I had to monitor my intake and keep out a separate glass and it was kinda like medicine so I used it in that manner which means I only took it when I hurt enough to take something for the pain. There had to be something better right?
Well, I found that something better it in the form of Alkaline Water. There are numerous companies*** out there that make drops to add to your water and there is even one company that bottles alkaline water. The latter seems like it might be more expensive in the long run so I chose some drops from Alkazone which were the only ones I could buy locally. The vitamin shop sells them for $21 and and they have proven to be incredibly simplistic and therefore get used with just about every glass of water that I drink throughout the day.
So for anyone who has gout or knows someone with gout, I strongly urge you to try the baking soda remedy** above and see if it works for you. If it helps to relieve your gout you may want to consider an easier option in bottled water or drops to add to your water like I use.
* FCC disclaimer: I am not getting free product nor pay for this review. However, I AM open to money or free product if anyone wants to provide it! (o=
** Baking Soda contains a fair amount of salt. Please moderate salt intake while using it or how that fits into a restricted salt intake.
***Another company whose product I would like to try is from ph-ion.com With them there are two different bottles where the minerals come separately from the alkaline booster whereas Alkazone puts them in the same bottle. Is there a difference? Dunno. However if you are interested in getting pH strips, ph-ion.com looks to have the best on the market.