Cherries and gout

Apparently there's something in cherries that can relieve the painful symptoms of gout.

If you have gout or know someone with this condition, try investigating black cherry juice concentrate, so-called, or cherry extract capsules. You might be able to find these in your local health food shop. If not, they are available widely in the US. You can try using a search engine and you should find some online retailers offering them. One brand of juice concentrate is called Jensen's, though it contains sugar and iron reportedly, which one gout sufferer that I know was reluctant to ingest because of kidney problems. There are also dry capsules available that don't contain sugar and iron, though I can't remember the brand of these.

It really does seem to work. I've heard several stories of people whose gout has quickly subsided once they took the cherry extracts, and I've now seen someone benefit first-hand. One alternative medicine practitioner that I know insists that the black cherry variant is the one that works. I don't know.

If you suffer from pre-existing kidney or liver problems, be careful even though this is a natural (but artificially concentrated) product. The sufferer I mention above eventually had to stop taking his cherry extract capsules because blood tests revealed that they had caused an adverse effect upon his body's purification system.