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Introduction to Gout
Medical authorities define gout as urate crystals accumulating around your joints, causing inflammation and intense pain. They claim that urate crystals can form as a result of high level of uric acid in the blood. But what is causing the high level of uric acid in the blood? Is it unbalanced diet, stress, or genetics?
Normally, uric acid dissolves in your blood and is filtered out by your kidneys to be excreted through your urine. When your body produces high levels of uric acid and your kidneys cannot keep up, the uric acid level will build up. Eventually this will lead to the formation of urate crystals in your joints or surrounding tissues, causing pain, inflammation, and swelling.
According to medical books, a substance that causes gout is excess uric acid in your blood from protein metabolism. Allegedly lack of exercise, excessive drinking of alcohol, obesity, stress, etc., will increase the concentration of uric acid in the blood, giving you “hyperuricemia”, the underlying cause of gout. The accumulated uric acid forms sharp, needle-like crystals in the joints, giving rise to sudden very painful attacks that can last from a few hours to several days.
The point is that medical scientists cannot find the cause of gout, and for that reason they cannot find its cure either. Old fashioned treatments such as consumption of tomato, peach, apple, orange, grape, and fig, have helped alleviate the pain. What is that telling us? Balancing the blood pH through the application of correct diet for your metabolic type will take care of it.
The Standard American Diet and accepted ways of thinking are causing needless suffering and premature deaths. We have the right potent, affordable supplements that can enable your natural inner healing powers to restore your health and vitality.
Gout will end up disfiguring your joints if you leave it long enough. Skin over the affected joint may be red and shiny. Initially, gout affects one or two joints at a time, most often in the feet (the ball of the big toe) and ankles. Without treatment, the pain will subside in about a week, and return in later months or years. But in time, the attacks become more frequent and severe, involving more joints. When gout becomes chronic, joint damage is deforming and crippling.
The Cause of Gout - Excess Uric Acid
Naturally present in your body, uric acid is used for metabolism, the breaking down of food for energy. When your body is healthy and in proper pH balance, uric acid dissolves in your blood and passes through your kidneys into urine. When your pH levels are acidic from poor diet, stress, and lack of sleep, too much uric acid is produced, or too little is excreted. Too much uric acid can result from purines. They are uric acid producing substances, found in many of the high-protein foods consumed by our society.
From these causes, your blood and tissues become saturated with uric acid. This can cause the formation of microscopic needle-like crystals in joints or surrounding tissues, resulting in pain, inflammation and swelling. This is gout.
Too much uric acid does not happen suddenly, but every day over years, more uric acid is produced than excreted. If your body?s balance is not restored, and blood levels of uric acid are not brought down to a manageable level, then new attacks can become more frequent.
Uric acid is the end product of purine metabolism (purines are building blocks of RNA and DNA).
The uric acid in your blood can be measured: excess disease is called hyperuricaemia, and does not necessarily cause gout, as the body does eliminate some of the excess. Blood testing for uric acid will not show the amount of crystallized uric acid in connective tissue, that is gout.
How To Prevent Excess Uric Acid, and Prevent Gout
Determine your Metabolic Type
It is best to confirm it with certainty, but more likely than not you will be the type that needs to eat less proteins and fats, and more fruits and vegetables.
Become a Vegetarian
Gout is a disease of over-eating of protein foods by people whose metabolic
type is suited to eating mostly vegetables and fruits. The simplest preventive
solution is vegetarianism. The simplest therapeutic solution is raw-food
vegetarianism and fasting. If you are not willing to give up food altogether,
do a "pseudo-fast" by simply not eating meat while drinking
lots of water.
Increased Vitamin C consumption improves urinary excretion of uric acid.
(Cheraskin, Ringsdorf Jr., and Sisley: The Vitamin C Connection, Harper
and Row, 1983.) Buffered ascorbate "C" apparently works better for some, ascorbic acid for others.
The easiest solution is eating cherries. Lots of cherries, cherries
by the bucket. Sour cherries work best, but fresh sweet cherries will
help a great deal as well. This time-tested remedy may seem almost too
simple to work, but it does. You just go ahead and try.
If you suffer from gout, the following foods are high in Purines, and
should be avoided: organ meats (liver, brains, kidney, tongue, tripe and
sweetbreads), anchovies, herring and mackerel. Smaller amounts of purines
are found in all meats, poultry, fish, shellfish, fish roe, scallops,
peas, lentils, and beans.
Avoid Alcoholic Beverages
Consuming too much alcohol (especially beer) can inhibit the excretion
of uric acid, which can lead to gout. Generally speaking, too much alcohol
is more than two drinks a day for men, and more than one for women. If
you're having a gout attack, it's best to avoid alcohol completely.
Drink Plenty of Energized Water
Water, especially energized water will dilute uric acid in your blood
and urine.
Genetics, Gender and Age
One out of four people with gout has a family history of the condition.
Gout affects mostly men, usually between 30 and 50 years of age. Pre-menopausal
women generally have lower uric acid levels, that tend to increase after
age 50, along with the increase incidences of gout.
Medical Conditions and Drugs
Medical conditions that can cause gout include high blood pressure (hypertension),
diabetes, high levels of fat & cholesterol in the blood (hyperlipidemia),
and narrowing of the arteries (arteriosclerosis). Surgery, sudden or severe
illness or injury, and immobility due to bed rest also can increase uric
acid levels. A less common cause is longstanding kidney disease.
Drugs that can cause excess uric acid include thiazide diuretics (used
to treat high blood pressure), low-dose aspirin therapy, and anti-rejection
drugs (prescribed for people who have undergone a transplant). Chemotherapy
drugs that increase the breakdown of abnormal cells, release large amounts
of purines into the blood, raising uric acid levels.
There's no short-term way to prevent gout, but keeping uric acid
levels within a normal range is the key to being free of this painful
disease.
How To Naturally Prevent Gout and Allow Healing
The most important route to vital health, and to naturally prevent and
cure gout is:
- regular cleansing to detoxify,
- proper nourishment,
- keeping neutral pH balance in your body.
Let us help you heal through these processes.
Step One: Cleanse and Detoxify
Regular cleansing of your body will begin the healing of discomforts
and diseases, and bring you into a more vibrant state of health. Every
system in your body will function more efficiently.
To be free of discomforts, you must remove the underlying cause, or
the condition will return. It takes time to clean a body that has been
accumulating toxins over a lifetime, but the rewards will be well worth
the time and effort.
Step Two: Proper & Adequate Nutrition
When supported with proper nutrition from food, your body can heal arthritis
and maintain a state of health. With the proper foods eaten at the right
times, your body efficiently absorbs nutrients, and eliminates toxins,
resulting in a healthy immune system that can heal and be free of pain
and disease.
Learn to obey the laws of nature: eat simple & natural foods, properly
prepared & combined, and your body will be happy to restore and maintain
vibrant health.
Nourishment from food should maintain your ideal weight. Your ultimate
diet is 80% raw food (organic, if possible), including some live foods,
that are still growing (sprouts, wheat grass, fresh picked garden salads).
This diet includes more grains, vegetables and fruits than protein, which
should come mostly from non-animal sources like nuts (almonds, apricot
nut, hazelnuts), legumes (beans, peas, lentils), and seeds (hemp seed
hearts, flax, sesame).
Step Three: pH Balancing
A critical factor in curing arthritis is balancing the pH in your body.
This creates a healthy internal environment and immune system.
Total healing of chronic illness takes place only when your blood is
restored to a normal, slightly alkaline pH. The magnitude of this is of
incredible importance to someone who is fighting a disease, overcoming
an illness, or just wanting to feel better. Our overly acidic society
is producing very high rates of diseases.
Your body is an amazing naturally self-correcting system: if you work
with it, it is capable of tremendous self healing.
Natural Therapies for Gout Pain Relief and Healing
Himalayan Crystal Salt Brine Therapy
Eating common table salt results in the formation of edema, or excess
fluid in body tissue, which is also the cause of cellulite. Doctors tell
us to avoid salt (sodium chloride) because it is harmful. For every gram
of sodium chloride your body cannot get rid of, it uses 23 grams of water
to neutralize the salt.
If the sodium chloride is still too high, your body re-crystallizes
it by using available dietary (animal) proteins, which also cannot be
broken down and eliminated. Your body uses these proteins to produce uric
acid, in order to get rid of the excess salt. As your body cannot dispose
of uric acid, it binds with the sodium chloride to form new crystals,
that are then deposited directly in your bones and joints.
This is the cause of different kinds of rheumatisms such as gout, arthritis
and kidney & gall bladder stones. This re-crystallizing is your body's
"band-aid" solution for cells and organs, to protect them from
irreparable damage of irresponsible food intake. In the long run, it poisons
your system because those substances cannot be disposed of.
Exercise is Essential for Vitality
And To Be Free From Gout
Exercise, to be rid of gout pains, should include stretching to maintain
& increase all joint?s range of motion, strengthening to stabilize
joints, and endurance to increase stamina. You should also reduce repetitive
joint use, and avoid sports injuries with proper warm-ups, and choose
appropriate sports equipment.
Complications of Gout
When uric acid levels have been high for a long time, and acute gout
has been frequent and severe, deposits of uric acid salts may appear around
the affected joint, and even in other tissues such as the ears. They appear
as chalk colored bumps, called tophi.
Long term high uric acid levels can lead to kidney damage. Some people
with gout develop kidney stones.
Crystal deposits also cause another condition, known as false gout,
or pseudogout. Instead of crystals formed from uric acid, pseudogout crystals
are made of calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate. They can affect the big toe,
but more likely the large joints, such as your knees, wrists and ankles.
These complications show a critical need for removing the preexisting
conditions of gout (acidic pH and high level of uric acid) through the
processes of Cleansing, Nourishing, and Balancing Your Body?s pH, as mentioned
above.
Treating an Acute Attack of Gout
Drugs used for acute attacks (typically nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory)
have no effect on reducing uric acid levels, and they have a limit as
to how much pain they can control. But most importantly, the preexisting
conditions of gout remain, and attacks will continue to burden you. You
must take measures to reduce uric acid levels.
We at Life-Enthusiast Co-op, along with our members, have had wonderful
results with our products. Let us help you heal through the processes
of Cleansing, Nourishing, and Balancing Your Body?s pH, to allow your
body to naturally heal itself.
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