Hello, I am also new to the site and excited to hear what everyone has to say. We have a site that fights HFCS, aspartame, MSG, Carrageenan and sodium benzoate along with food coloring. We have taken a much broader stand fighting harmful chemicals in food. To that end we point out where the chemicals are and how to avoid them by cooking eveything imaginable from scratch. After 3 years we have hundreds of recipes and are working on two cookbooks that consolidate and make the recipes easier to find and share with others.
We are always excited to see other WEB sites fighting to eliminate chemicals from our processed foods and were impressed by the clear list of foods to avoid on this WEB site.
A note on gout, I just had my first experience with it and it is absolutely terrible! Mine lasted 6 months, for 5 months I could barely walk both feet were crippled. I just started wearing shoes this month! None of the medicine prescribed by the doctors cured gout and they all had very serious side effects. I did not take them since all they were supposed to do was reduce inflamation!
Here is what I learned and found successful. Stay off your feet and keep them elevated. Black cherries and Black Cherry juice concentrate breaks down the uric acid crystals, 15 cherries twice a day or the equivalent in juice. Bannas, strawberries and vinegar reduce the inflammation. Celery seed is also quite beneficial. These products really made a difference and reduced the pain within a day. Once uric acid turns to crystals it is a slow process to convert back and the kidneys typically only excrete a minimal amount of uric acid a day. It will take time to get the body back in balance. Minimal red meat, tuna or muscles, limit the sugar, A pinch of baking soda in each glass of his drinking water a day will improve his PH. He is very acidic right now. Test his urine with litmus paper found at most health food stores, he will be in the 5's and should be 6.8 to 7.23.
Plenty of rest and make sure he drinks 8 glasses of water throughout the day. We can only suggests this (it diffinetly worked for me). It is your choice and responsibility to follow it or not. By the way we cook ALL of our food from scratch and use no HFCS. My gout was brought on by a weird virus, I know of three other people that had this mild virus that ended up with gout although theirs lasted only a month or less.
Hope this helps, my doctors recommended none of the above and it took extensive research to find something that worked. If he does not work on getting rid of the gout it will progress to other joints, so be very careful. Uric acid is a by product of the muscles, exercise at this time will increase his already high uric acid levels. Don't exercise until it subsides,
We will be joining conversations on this site, but also invite you to visit our sites Healthylife
http://healthylife.rmtrain.com (avoiding chemicals in processed foods) or our new site
http://intothegarden.rmtrain.com (4 season gardening to avoid pesticides)
The very best of luck on your husband's and a warm hello everyone.