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I would not think that there are any similarities betwqeen bread and beer. Both are starches fermented with yeast but in bread the yeast is killed with heat and with beer it is filtered out.
Beer is dehydrating, bread is not.
Refersh my memory, what medications are you taking to treat your gout? What is your serum uric acid?
This is a whole new can of worms.
I have OFTEN thought wouldn't it be nice to introduce the enzyme that man was lacking that converted uric acid to alllantoin and allowed easy excretion. But then introducing enzymes that evolution has eliminated (presumably for a good reason) might have some red flags.
In the case pf Peg-Uricase…it's allowed in Europe but the U.S. FDA has said NO (this year if I'm not mistaken.)
In any case, good bad or indifferent, uricase will not attack tophi at all, just convert uric acid in the blood to a more excretable form. In that respect, it will not likely battle tophi any better than allopurinol, febuxostat, probenecid or sulfinpyrazone. Tophi are walled off by scar-like tissue as a defense mechanism. Huge tophi are best removed by surgery for this very reason.
I have drained a tophus from my thumb. myself but I would be hesitant to recommend it. I am contemplating doing the same thing with my little finger but only becasue the tophus looks so very close to the skin surface and the tophus is small.
Remember though, any intervention is a SURGICAL intervention, whether you do it or a doctor does it, and one must think of danger of infection, scarring, sterile environment, antibiotic covering, etc.
In fact even if a tophus opened and drained spontaneously I would be very careful to keep it scrupulaously clean, disinfected, properly gauzed etc. just like any other wound. I guess the only thing I would do with a tophus that I wouldn't do with a wound is to make sure it keeps open and draining till all the yucccchhhh is out.
I was extremely and amazingly successful with my thumb. But remember, your doctor can PROBABLY do this better than you can although most probably WON'T.
Always remember it's YOUR call. I ask my doctor for his best advice and then I connect the dots. Since I'm paying the bills, and I'm doing the suffering, and the cure is most important to ME, it is I who makes the choices.
My old doctor told me to go to 200 mg. also, and after a while I started to get bunion twinges again and my little finger tophus apppeared. I went back to 300 mg. and all was fine for a year or more. Then I went back to 200 mg. to test the effect of furosemide-losartan and I started getting twinges and a 6.7 UA at my NEW doctor's office. He said that was fine and I corrected him and went back to 300 mg. and all is fine…but that damn little tophi won't resolve.
Someday I will take a sterile razor blade to it…all it will take is a half millimeter deep slice and it will ooze out. But I'm not feeling particularly brave these days. Better yet, I DO have a glucose tester auto lance that has 5 depth settings….HMMM! WHo knows maybe POP GOES THE WEASEL.
It's your call utube.
Post repeatted elsewhere but pertinent in both places:
I asked the pharmacist in my supermarket (10/11/2009) if he was having trouble getting generic colchicine. He said he saw no difference in his supplers ability to give him the quantities he asked for.
NYC metro area.
I asked the pharmacist in my Supermarket yesterday if he noticed any trouble getting generic colchicine. He say no, the situation is exactly as it was.
That was heartening.
Tomas,
I am presuming 300 mg. allopurinol…that is wise and requires some patience for some people.
What is clearly not working is your ibuprofen even at that high dose. For me it would cause unbearable stomach pain. You have given ibuprofen a valid trial perios and I think it is time to try something else. No sense beating a dead horse.
I recommend colchicine
Since your pain doesn't sound excruciatingly acute I think something like 2 or 4 pills a day (around 2 mg. total) until your pain resolves. If it works it will work pretty quickly.
Aspirin: A dreadful gout drug (although a marvellous HEART drug) that retains uric acid when dosing is low BUT people who can take 16 tablets a day (5 grams) can dump uric acid at a furious rate. But again, this takes a cast iron stomach. Back in the old days, that was the standard treatment for Rheumatoid Arthritis. Most urate dumping seems to come in days 3 through 10…don't ask me why.
If you cannot get cochicine from a sadistic doctor, a better alternative than ibuprofen is indomethacin. You might alternately want to try 2 or 4 naproxen daily (Aleve is the more expensive patent version.) In the States, both versions are cheap available over-the counter without Rx.
So the choice is yours but there seems little point in going on with the ibuprofen.
trev, took the wods right out of my fingers.
My first thought was beware of LYME. My brother-in- law had been an avid fisherman with a cabin in the mountains for the warmer months. He came down with a terribly swollen knee and ankle and the first suspect was gout. He even had his knee drained twice for relief. He had a blood test and it came back positive for choice #2, LYME DISEASE that he had probably incubated for 2 years. A month of strong antibiotics and he is aok.
THe rash is supposed to be a telltale bullseye but often is distorted and sometimes not seen at all. My BIL never noticed such a rash, not to say it wasn't present and he thought iit a mosquito bite or poison ivy. It sometimes hard to remember back 2 years for something trivial.
LYME is caused by a spirochete and resembeles syphiilis in a number of ways…spirochetes, a sore, chancre, at the site of infection a long time establishment in the body, inability of the immune system to fight it and then eventual joint destruction, and even dementia unless strong antibitics intervene.
Odds are good that the rash is just a rash and you'll never know the cause…but have a blood draw for LYME next time you see your doctor even if the odds are slight because it can be a pretty awful scourge and the sooner it is treated the quicker the cure.
p.s. A “half smiley face” sounds a little too much like half a bullseye. Check out these two pics under symptoms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…..me_disease
p.p.s. An allopurinol rash will either come on VERY quickly with the first couple doses because of a hypertensitivity reaction or take many years to develop as the body slowly loses tolerance for the drug…the latter is rare.
Ken,
Ice cream is perfectly fine during a gout attack…just make sure it isn't salami or liver flavored.
Dragos,
If you are an underexcretor, probenecid will increase your excretion markedly. But allopurinol makies less uric acid so then your underexcretion will do the job. Reading between the millions of lines on the subject leaves me to believe that probenecid has more side effects than allopurinol, especially the increased likelihood of stone formation. But people are different and there's nothing writ in stone that says if allopurinol hasn't done the job in a year then probenecid might be a good choice. Some people with masses of tophi take BOTH drugs to get levels of UA in the 3's.
I THINK (but don't quote me) that there is serious cross allergy between probenecid and sulpha drugs.
If allopurinol gave you a lot of trouble with joint pain probably from migrtating UA, try taking it with daily colchicine, perhaps 2 a day for a month or two.
I feel bad for people who have to suffer the pains to get the cure because I was so very lucky…no acute attacks since my very first dose of allopurinol (400 mg) all those years ago.
Richard Bell said:
Zip, your point about starting and stoping therapy is one my specialist has been stressing from the beginning and probably more important than which particular therapy a person may be on. Up/down spikes are sure to be problematic and only prolong the inevidable. Or at least that is what I’m gleaming from what I’ve been reading here and else where.
Richard,
I could not agree with you more. I have not missed my allopurinol for more than a half dozen days in 20 years. Once started it, and uloric should NEVER be stopped…with ONE exception. And that exception there is the real possibility that the drug might cause kidney destruction and death…that overarching concern supercedes ALL other considerations. The same goes for ANY drug…as Hippocrates said “First, do no damage.”
Seriously, 2nd, why not take allopurinol while you judge the effect on your kidneys of the absent Uloric. Incidentally, your years of untreated/unrealiized gout may very well have CAUSED your kidney damage. Have them MRI'd for signs of stones.
Do you know your GFR? If not, ask your nephrologist.
2nd,
Not to sound like a broken record but it REALLY sounds like you had an attack of Rhabdo…brown urine, fever, kidney damage…did you have muscle pain?
In any case, EVERY DRUG you take , even your vitamins, should be taken only with the careful and specific approval of a good nephrologist.
(Do you know your glomerular filtration rate?)
You just cannot risk the destruction of your kidneys…not an option. What I would consider is stopping the Uloric for a month or two and see if your kidneys improve. Perhaps switching to 300 mg. allopurinol to keep your uric acid low during the test period will be an even better idea. THe drugs are very different so they are very unlikely to have the same side effects.
IF, a big IF, uloric is destroying your kidneys it MUST be discontinued so your goal is to flesh out that IF with a little experimentation.
Have your kidneys been sonogrammed or MRI'd to see if there are any stones from the years of untreated gout ?
And just for the record, once started on allopurinol OR Uloric you continue taking it during attacks. Starting and stopping either of these drugs is no different from a diabetic starting and stopping insulin. These drugs are FOREVER unless an intolerance intervenes (like renal failure.)
A uric acid of 10 is quite horrifically high. If it is reproducible you should get on a drug quickly.
I concur that rapid weight loss ALWAYS involves tissue breakdown even if we pray to Zeus to make it all fat. Lean tissue breakdown causes the release of copious amounts of nucleic acids whose end point is uric acid. The kidney can only sparsely and slowly get rid of the stuff so it crystallizes in the colder joints.
Have the urine test soon but it's not mandatory and then get on the appropriate drug (allopurinol <most likely> or probenecid.) You want a lifetime with uric acid below 6.0 mg/dL. If your level was 7.0, there would be a CHANCE that you might respolve the problem with “good living” but with a 10.0 you must take solace in the old DuPont logo: “better living through chemistry.” <You may be too young to know that motto.
>Every time you see your doctor make sure he pulls blood for another uric acid test.
If the pain gets intense, the best treatment is temporary colchicine but that is just for acute attacks.
Dan,
Do NOT be frightened of allopurinol. Take it from smneone who has taken RAFTS of pills for many conditions. It is among the most INNOCUOUS of drugs and causes almost NOBODY any side effects. Compare allopurinol with ANY anti-hypertensive and allopurinol comes off as safer than an M&M.
It works, it's safe and it's a life saver. PERIOD.
Untreated gout will kill you…allopurinol will save your life.
2nd,
So, reading between the lines you went ON allopurinol and the OFF allopurinol a long time ago.
Can you try to remember the specifics? Why did you stop? How long before your gout got intolerable enough to stat febuxostst?
My simple nostrum: “Take NEW drugs only if your life depends on it.”
Oy, how awful.
It sounds like a case of Rhabdomyolysis…a terrible scourge. Are you taking any other drugs that might contribute, like statin drugs, ketoconozole, or any macroliide antibiotics.
Did you think of trying allopurinol BEFORE going to febuxostat? Why not?
Thanks for the warning on this new drug,,,I've always been suspect of new drugs.
Musn't make the assumption that gout is caused by too much iron and EXACERABTED by bean eating which can be prevented by chelators to REMOVE the iron frm the beans which could have been avoided altogether. Sorry to strring that all together, but thats the quacky dis-logic.
THus, the skin of the black beans does NOT function to provide protection from the poisonous beans which few peolple eat.
Oral chelation is another quack quack…it sells a lot of junk. Nothing is chelated orally.
Best way to avoid iron is to call Congeress and DEMAND it not be mandatorily added to all grain products: pasta, rice, bread…and on and on. Trying to chelate it ouut while mandating you ingest it is …there is no word.
But they have decide menstruating women need iron so it is mandatory we ALL get it.
I can hardly remember my last menses…or was that hemmorhoids…perhaps an ejaculation after eating Harvard Beets?
Is there any evidence that black bean broth lowers serum uric acid levels?
Has anyone put anthocyanins into a capsule?
Hi Dragos,
Yes, large rafts of UA data would be helpful to assess the values of food (or lack thereif) and I am an information junkie but what holds me back is the close to $1000 U.S./year to generate just 2 data points a day (machine, strips, lancets,shipping, etc.) This is far too pricey a game for me. This compares with my cost for allopurinol of $40/year.
You are where many of us found ourselves. You got a few readings of hyperuricemia and thought nothing about it, then had some foot pain and didn't connect it with gout, but then you got THE TOE and the correct diagnosis and hoped good living and NSAIDS would be enough for control (actually the usual first response is to do nothing and see the bad attack as a quirk that will not happen again.) You found the right answer early and tried allopurinol but wanted off it fast so you found a reason to abandon it (some joint pain after starting is quite common.)
You are now looking for alternate means to control your uric acid. You have made the leap of faith that you COULD contro it by watching what you eat and measuring to see the response of your foods. Some few people can go this route but most cannot succeed without drugs.
You have proven uric acid deposits, your first attack guarantees this. You get consistent UA numbers around 7.0 with the occasional 8 and 12. Flukes or not, ALL these readings indicate a uric acid too high to remain in solution in the presence of any urate crystals in the body. Unless you can get STEADY readings below 6.0 without drugs, you will have more gout atttacks.
Once you have your first gout attack, you have gout…once you lay down your first crystal, you have gout… and once your immune system first attacks these crystals, you have gout. And if the immune system behaves the way it USUALLY does, every time it attacks what it considers an antigen it gets better and better at fighting the same antigen faster and harder. That's why attacks get worse and more frequent as the immune system gets “trained.” You must intervene at some point to decide when enough is ENOUGH!
So your options aren't many: try all the folk remedies, they will work or not, most likely not. Get a tester and see if you can find triggers to avoid. Decide on how many attacks are ENOUGH and when you reach that number, get on a drug. If I were just starting with this illness, I would have the 24 hour urine test to see if probenecid was a viable option, but allopurinol agrees with me and 300 mg./day allows me to eat and drink anything I wish and I haven't had a real attack in more than a decade. During a 2 year trial at 200 mg. I was getting occasional twinges (and my blood test confirmed I was running UA's in the upper 6's.)
So good luck on your journey and we are here to help.
Do I then take it that you both agree to throwing away the soak water? Mind you, that's an OVERNIGHT soak. Do you both feel that we are not tossing out the bulk of l the anthrocyanins and thus implying the anthrocyanins only come out of the beans with simmering?
Or are you assumg the throwaway cold “soak” is just a few minutes soak and thus just to clean the beans and thus the anthrocyanins are all available in the finished soup?
Ionized water is a pricey scam.
Distilled water is fine IF your tap water is contaminated, otherwise tap water is just fine.
If using distilled water maybe a piece of fruit a day, a glass of milk and a magnesium supplement will give you MORE subtrtacted minerals than you need.
The type of water you use will have ZERO effect on gout.
Ionized Water is a scam.
If your tap water has a decent taste, that's what you should drink.
If your tap water is contaminated then distilled water is the next best choice…it's tolerable if cold and shaken to reoxygenate. You might biss a teeny bit of certain minerals but a piece of fruit a day, a glass of milk and a small dailyy magnesium supplement will take care of that.
Hey guys, some opinions please.
I am a cheapskate and I LOVE thick pureed black bean soup redolent of cumin, coriander, chilis, with a toss of minced onions…I have it very often. I used to use all canned beans but they are just TOO salty, so now I use half canned half dried…better flavor thann all dried.
I prepare a pound of black turtle beans and divide it into three containers. Each third then gets mixed with a can of beans (15.5 ounces Goya or Vitarroz, liquid and all) and a can of water and the spices and pulverized in a blender serving 2 with about 20 ounces of soup each (also about 20 grams fiber each, too.) In essence I've cut the salt in half also.
Now here's the question:
Instructions on the bean preparation is to soak a pound overnight in 6 cups of water and then toss the water, then add 6 more cups water and boil an hour (usually takes at least 2 hours to soften.) I have been dutifully following the regimen but HATE to toss the soak water becasue it is as black as ink and looks nutritious.
To get any benefits (supposed or otherwise) would you recommend I change the method and
1. Boil the beans in the soak liquid and incorporate all into the soup.
2. Drain the beans and SAVE the soak liquid as the ”black bean broth” cure and then add new water and make the soup.
3. Discard the cold soak liquid assuming it is useless and proceed with normal instructions
Which seems the best way to go.
(Throwing away the beans is NOT an option.)
Sidebar:
Any opinions in what the thick dark liquid in the CAN of beans is?
I'm with you Tavery. I have tried out so many miracle cures over the years and I finally became a skeptic. I diutifully used megadosing with Vitamin C to cure colds…it DOESN'T. I used Vitamin E until it was founf to CAUSE heart disease over 400 units a day. I used DMSO, Glucosamine-Chondoirin, MSM, SAM-E for joint pains…all nonsensical fraudulent quackery. Remember Vitamin E for sexuality?” Anyone ever try Horny Goat Weed…I did, more crapola. ANd the individual VERY expensive amino acid isolates like arginine and ornithine to build big muscles by releasing growth hormones…total twaddle.
If I thought long and hard I could go on for paragraph after paragraph.
Donald Duck described it best when he said Quack, Quack, Quack,
There seems to be some evidence that Vitamin C megadosing is uricosuric and might lower uric acid .5 mg/dl but then in a highly acid environment it might deposit urate and oxalate kidney stones. Like megadosing with aspirin probably the body tries to detoxifiy itself from poisonous acidosis and dumps all acids…so some uric acid will pee out. Probably a pint of hydrochloric acid would work the same way.
Absolutely trev.
For myself I am reasonably sure that I could be completely gout free with zero antigout meds but for one single fact of my life. My blood pressure goes up dramatically in the absence of a daily diuretic. I am a salt sensitive volume driven hypertensive and there is no diuretic that doesn't cause the retention of uric acid by the kidneys. My gout was, plain and simply, caused by a decade of hydrochlorothiazide…nothing more, nothing less.
If I COULD stop eating salt I could stop both drugs but I CANNOT conceive of life with less than 2 grams of sodium unless I spent all day in the kichen preparing everything I made from scratch…and then suicide would become a risk factor to consider.
So for ME, my diet/gout/allopurinol analysis must always include the hypertensive risk of stroke, heart attack, or kidney damage. I curse diuretics but in the same way that some diabetics probably curse their daily insulin. At least I am happy to have found Lasix (furosemide) which according to a couple sources raises uric acid only a quarter as much as thiazide.
I'm surprised some enterprisingly rapacious pharmaceutical company doesnt patent a combo drug: allopurinol-hydrochorothizide. They could call it PISSURIL and sell it for $5 a tab. Remember, you guys are my witnesses…I thought of it first so you may need to testify on my behalf against Pfizer or Merck.
trev,
All chemical reactions occur at the instantaneous free radical stage. Thus all oxidation by oxygen is by NASCENT oxygen or O+ or even O3+rather than the sleepy O2.
The term “free radical” has no more meaning than “anti-oxidant.” Both exist and neither is a selling point for unnecessary chemicals. Without oxidation by free radicals life is IMPOPSSIBLE. Usually when someone uses the term free radical or antioxidant he is saying to me that he has no background or training in chemistry but rather is fond of paperbacks advertising quack cures for something pill or other or other, usually ascorbic acid overdose.
Selling voodoo meds using terms like free radicals or antioxidants doesn't change the fact. The terms ALWAYS change to make nostrums sound NOW. I am curious how they sold radium treatments for arthritis or bloodletting for schitzophrenia.
cjeezy, of course 3.0 is safe…and probably fleeting…enjoy it
And yes, Utube…a steady 5.0 is fine, proably 6.0 is also okayish but diurnal swings to 7 is not.
So what we want is control to a number that guarantees us freedom from ALL gout atttacks! Nothing more or less is required. But I doubt there has ever been a death to anyone caused by a uric acid of 2.0, if such a thing is possible.
trev,
I always leave any talk about anti-oxidant advantages to others. I am a chem engineer with biology and medicine as hobbies and to me an anti-oxidant is a reducing agent like wood and paper and sodium. It is burned by an oxidizing agent like oxygen or chlorine. All life is basically a cosmic interplay of oxidation-reduction (Redox.)
If anti-oxidant means a substance capable of stopping oxidation in the body, then the very best anti-oxidant is a large dose of cyanide…all oxidation will stop instantly as the deoxidzed person hits the floor for the last time.
Not to offend anyone, but to me “anti-oxidant” is merely the latest buzzward to sell junk supplements…today's copper bracelets, and mercury treatments.
Now, in uric acid's praise I must say that I have seen a couple positive correllations between IQ and high uric acid.
How, what, why, where, when…don't ask. But it DOES seem we are all pretty smart.On the immune system: I guess none of us has any doubts that uric acid can “stimulate” the immune system but perhaps it's in the same way that pneumococcus, cholera, tetanus, or influenza can. After all what is a major gout attack but a really GOOD stimulation of the immune system while it tries to remove a toe? Perhaps “TORTURE” might be a proper synonym for “stimulate.”
Well, from the old timer here, I feel that I can do or eat ANYTHING as long as I am taking 300mg. allopurinol. I have had “vacations” involving 600 ml's of booze daily for 14 days. I eat seafood whenever I can, I love shellfish, gravies, calves liver smothered in sauteed onlions.
I have no trouble at all. Sum total of pain is one annoying little tophus on my little finger that one cannot see unless attention is called to it. Sometimes it looks like it is trying to break through the skin. Rarely does it cause any discomfort.
Feet are fine.
So that's what one can expect from 20 years of allopurinol.
