Gout Symptoms
Gout is a painful condition that often occurs when you have high levels of a substance called uric acid in your blood. The uric acid can crystallize and settle in the joints of your body. This often happens around the toe or foot. The result is overwhelming pain that often occurs in the middle of the night. The pain can be so intense that even the weight of a bed sheet on the big toe can be overwhelming. Eating cherries and drinking cherry juice can relieve pain caused by gout.
Cherries
Dr. Ludwig W. Blau was so severely impacted by gout in 1950 that he was confined to a wheelchair. He ate a bowl full of cherries and found that his pain and swelling were reduced significantly. He continued to eat six cherries a day until the gout disappeared. When he stopped eating them, the gout returned. He reported this to his family physician, who told 12 other gout patients about the cherries and their impact on Blau. The other 12 patients had positive results and the findings were published in Texas Reports on Biology and Medicine (Vol. 8, No. 3, 1950).
Key Ingedients
Cherries contain vitamin C and anthocyanins. Vitamin C reduces uric acid by as much as 50 percent. Anthocyanins are often found in darker-colored fruits like grapes and cherries. Anthonycanins have been shown to reduce swelling caused by gout, and dark cherries contain 80 to 300mg of anthocynanins per serving. As a result, they can help a patient feel relief upon eating the cherries.
