The Gout Zone

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18792028

One of my favorite cartoons as a child growing up in Cedar Vale, Kansas, was Our Boarding House, featuring the redoubtable windbag, Amos P. Hoople. An overweight, cigar-smoking, charlatan, Major Hoople was great at huffing and puffing, but there was little or no follow through. He was of doubtful military background, and he took every opportunity that came his way to put things over on his long-suffering wife, Martha, who ran the boarding house. It was Amos who first introduced me to “the gout.” He was periodically laid up with it, one foot wrapped in a bandage, confined to his overstuffed chair.

Imagine my chagrin when I suddenly came down with what appeared to be a full-blown case of gout myself. I woke up with the big toe of my right foot swollen to double size and unable to put my weight on it. I know that my talented medical intuitive daughter tells me that what I had wasn’t exactly gout, and there is a disease called pseudogout, but I’ll call it gout anyway. Otherwise I couldn’t talk about Amos P. Hoople, and what fun would that be?

A doctor friend of mine immediately suggested two prescription drugs I might ask for at the local clinic to control the swelling and pain. When I went online to check the “Adverse Reactions” (side effects), I read down the list until I encountered “kidney failure” and “death” before deciding to try other methods first. I tried soaking my foot in Epsom salt footbaths, applied essential oils, arnica gel and made some dietary changes. Then I came upon the website of Bert Middleton, who calls himself “The Gout Killer.” He markets an online book and video course where he promises to deal with the problem. I immediately bought both the book and the course and have followed his instructions more or less exactly. If you suffer from gout I can recommend his methods without reservation. I won’t divulge his secrets because he makes his living being “The Gout Killer.” If you want to contact him click HERE. 

And, by the way, neither he nor I will claim to treat gout. Big pharma and the medical profession have a lock on terms such as “treat” or “cure,” and if we claim to treat anything the medical thought police might show up at our door in the middle of the night and take us away!

If you want a one-word description of the cause of gout, that word would be acidosis—your internal chemistry is more acidic than it should be for optimum health. There are simple test strips that you can dip in saliva or urine to tell you what your pH level is. Plain water is pH 7 and just slightly alkaline would be ideal for your pee or spit. The lower the pH value the higher the acid level. For example, the acid in your car battery is less than pH 1 and the pH value of ordinary laundry bleach is around pH 13—about as alkaline as you can get.

I can report that my pH is now right in the normal range (7.3—7.4) and my gout attack has passed. I just need to adopt a life-style that keeps it that way. As an excuse for talking about Major Hoople it was OK, but wow, was it ever painful!