MY STRUGGLE WITH GOUT

My first experience with gout was in Hawaii where I came yearly to escape Northern California’s dreary winters. I ate mostly fish and fruit and tended to lose weight due to getting more exercise and eating a lower carbohydrate diet. At first I thought my sandals were responsible for my foot pain, but replacing them didn’t solve the problem. Each year the pain in my foot returned and worsened. My doctor on the mainland diagnosed me with having inadequate arch support and gave me inserts for my shoes. After that, whenever I had an attack I assumed I was not being good enough about wearing my arch support. It never occurred to me that I had gout.

After moving to Hilo, Hawaii my foot pain episodes occurred more frequently. I learned that lots of people in Hilo had similar symptoms and they told me it was gout. After researching the ailment, I was convinced my painful foot episodes were the result of gout attacks and not due to me being flat footed. Just to be sure, I had a blood test which confirmed that I had high levels of euric acid in my blood.

Gout is caused by high levels of euric acid in the blood that forms crystals, usually in or near joints. Feet and hands are the most common place that the crystals form and in my case, they formed next to my big toe making walking nearly impossible. The long thin crystals act like needles and cut into the tissue and bone so that even touching the spot can cause intense pain. Since euric acid is not very soluble in water, it is hard to get the crystals to dissolve. Repeated attacks can cause long term damage to the joints and tissue.

The prevalence of gout in Hilo meant that everyone had a lot of sympathy for me and they shared their favorite remedy for the problem. Some of their recommendations were very helpful. They suggested I drink lots of water to flush out the acid, but it didn’t help once an attack had started. They suggested I drink unsweetened black cherry juice or eat cherries which has a chemical that dissolves euric acid. Drinking cherry juice did help, especially the concentrated juice, but it didn’t stop me from having attacks.

The most popular cure I found on the internet was taking two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar daily that contained the “mother”. The “mother” turned out to be the bacteria that created the vinegar in the form of a cloud of brown stuff at the bottom of the jar. People on the internet had reported substantial relief in a matter of hours after taking this and so I choked down three tablespoons. It reduced the swelling and the pain within a few hours and so I kept taking it several times a day. Though it helped shorten the attack, it didn’t stop my attacks.

My doctor gave me a list of foods to avoid, but I was already eating foods that were considered okay. I added more cheese to my diet since many people claim that cheese it is an anti-gout food. Chicken, turkey, and fish were not considered problem foods though many people claim that eating any meat can be a problem. But I heard stories in Hilo of vegetarians that had terrible gout attacks, so I questioned how related eating meat was to the problem.

One of the ways I learned more about gout was by creating a gout Google alert so that I could quickly find out about new gout related content on the web. From the alerts I learned that gout is big problem and becoming more prevalent. Many health professionals speculate that the increase in gout is being caused by Americans’ diet making their bodies highly acidic. They claim that coffee, high protein diets, alcohol, soft drinks, and other highly acidic foods contribute to the problem and that gout is just one of the many negative health outcomes that result from it.

The volcanic activity on the Big Island has created a highly acidic environment where heavy VOG (volcanic gas emissions) coats everything with sulfuric acid. My gout attacks often started on heavy VOG days and others seemed to have attacks at the same time. In order to keep my body more ph neutral, I started eating foods that were high in alkaline, like agave syrup (instead in sugar), bananas, and papayas. I drank alkaline bottled water from the local health food store and noticed that it made me feel better. People at the health food store in Hilo told me to make sure to keep the cap on during voggy days because the air was so acidic it would turn the alkaline water acidic in just a few hours.

Water on the Big Island contains high levels of calcium due to it leaching out from lava. I read some claims that high levels of calcium in drinking water can cause gout attacks because the high mineral content makes it harder to dissolve and remove euric acid from the body. In California I had a reverse osmosis water system which may have helped protect me from attacks. So I started drinking bottled water created by the reverse osmosis process which removes most of the minerals in the water.

While researching high euric acid foods, I was surprised to see Canola oil show up. Canola (Canada oil low acid) is a hybrid of rapeseed oil which has been considered inedible by humans due to its large percentage of euric acid. Several versions of the rapeseed were propagated within the last ten years and it has now become a huge crop worldwide. The seed oil is now one of the most common oils used in food and the remaining plant is used as animal feed for cows, chickens, and turkeys. Canola oil is used to baste turkeys and chickens and much of the meat from Asian and American animals are fed feed created from rapeseed. Canola oil is considered the new “good” oil and recently replaced hydrogenated and safflower oils in most manufactured foods.



I decided to eradicate Canola oil and meats that might have been fed rapeseed feed from my diet. I now eat only local Hawaii grass-fed beef and fish. I don’t eat any prepared foods with Canola oil and I use rice bran oil and unrefined olive oil for cooking. It is a constant process to check the labels to make sure that a product that didn’t have Canola oil in it previously, still does not contain it. I am surprised at, how difficult it has been to remove chicken and turkey from my diet; they seem to be in everything.

Since I began avoiding all rapeseed based meat and foods and switched to alkaline and reverse osmosis drinking water, I have not had a gout attack in 8 months. I continue to drink cherry juice concentrate and minimize foods and drinks in my diet that increase my acidity level (though I do drink coffee and dry red wine). I feel that my health has improved and I am finally feeling comfortable taking long walks and increasing my exercise.

I believe my gout was not caused by any one thing but a combination of changes in the worldwide food supply, high acidity in Hawaii, my genetic predisposition, my diet, my age, and my overall health. I hope that the many changes I have made will continue to keep me gout free while also allowing me to lose weight and get into shape.