New study shows cherry does have effect to reduce gout

Recently I read an article published on Journal of Arthritis, "Pilot Studies of Cherry Juice Concentrate for Gout Flare Prophylaxis". It is interesting because I just wrote a post not long ago about cherry and gout. Cherry, miracle cure for gout? I found many positive words about cherry on gout, however, this article is the first one directly studying the effect scientifically.

14 patients with crystal proven gout participated in this study. 9 of them were given 1 table spoon cherry juice concentrates (equivalent to 45 to 60 cherries) twice a day and 5 of them were given same amount of pomegranate juice concentrates (1 tbsp equivalent to 1 pomegranate) for 120 days.  The patients taking cherry juice had a significant decreasing in the number of gout flares, which was not seen on the patients consuming pomegranate juice. 5 out of 9 patients were even free of flare and stopped NSAIDs (non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs)  intake. One interesting discovery is that even though cherry juice shows significant positive effect, it did not reduce the uric acid level. Therefore the authors believe the real magic behind is its anti-inflammatory actions such as inhibition of IL-1β secretion.

 

The study was small and short term (just 4 months), like the title said 'pilot study'. But I think it makes sense. It explains why many people reduced the pain of acute gout attack after they drank cherry juice. It probably has some effects similar to the NSAIDs but it is better because it is natural.

Best sautéed kale recipe

Kale is probably one of the healthiest vegitable in the planet. One cup of kale contains 36 calories, 5 grams of fiber, and 15% of the daily requirement of calcium and vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), 40% of magnesium, 180% of vitamin A, 200% of vitamin C, and 1,020% of vitamin K. It is also a good source of minerals copper, potassium, iron, manganese, and phosphorus.

One of my favorite way to cook kale is sautéed kale. Below is my favorite recipe, combined from many good ones I have found on the internet and tested in my pot. My husband likes it! I think the key elements are garlic and vinegar. Also it is important to first cover then open the lid to let the water gone.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds young kale, stems and leaves coarsely chopped
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
• 3 slice Spanish chorizo, chopped in small pieces (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock or water
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons vinegar (red wine vinegar, Chinese rice vinegar, sherry vinegar or balsamic vinegar)

Directions1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add the garlic and chorizo bits. Cook until garlic soft, but not colored. Add crushed red pepper.
3. Add kale and toss to combine. Cook until wilted and bright green, about 1 minute
3. Raise heat to high, add water or stock. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.
5. Remove cover and continue to cook, stirring until all the liquid has evaporated.
6. Season with salt and pepper to taste and add vinegar.

Giving up wine, is it really nessesary for gout sufferers?

Myself is not really a wine drinker. Actually I don't like any alcohol. However, my husband occasionally does like to drink a little bit wine. Ever since he got a couple of serious gout attack, I started the research on gout, trying to find a way to cure or at least contain it.

There are some research on the relationship between alcohol and gout. Though they are often inconclusive but somehow persuasive on the negative effect on gout. Particularly beer, since not only it contains alcohol but also contains purine. I read an article in Bandolier, an independent journal about evidence-based health care. It mentions an experiment conducted on 10 healthy men divided into two groups: non-alcohol consumer and regular alcohol drinker. All men were given oral alcohol and their blood samples were taken after 4 hours. It turns out that uric acid level rose 40 µmol/L after 180 min for regular drinker but no difference for abstainers. Even though the experiment only for 10 people and none of them has gout, it is still showing some quantitative evidence.

As for wine, the only direct research and people often refer to was the one published in 2004. The researchers followed 47,150 men aged 40 to 75 over 12 years, looking at their drinking habits (how many grams of alcohol they consumed per day). None of the men had gout in the beginning. The researchers documented 730 confirmed incident cases of gout among the men by Year 12.  Compared with men who did not drink alcohol, the risk of developing gout increased with the amount of alcohol that the person was consuming. (Choi, et al, April, 2004). However,  there did not appear to be an association between drinking two 4 oz.  glasses of wine a day and developing gout, regardless of whether the men were drinking red or white wine. Yet it is acknowledged that port, some red wines and stouts contain purines or oxypurines, which lead to an increased purine load.

Since there are not much scientific research on the effect of wine, particularly there has no real research on how drinking wine can affect people already had or are having gout attack. Can it trigger an attack? I turn to various gout forum to seek my answer. Sometimes the best information come from the people who are suffering from the problem because people will try all sort of ways to reduce the pain, often make harder effort than their doctors.

After reading and reading from the forum on this particular topic, I have the impression that red wine seems to cause more trouble than white wine. Many people said that they got attack right after drinking red wine. And I did not read too many people had the same experience with white wine. Even one person thought a white wine daily actually made him feel better. Another person thought red wine caused his attack 3 on 3 while the white wine seemed fine.

Though it is purely observation based, at this point, my conclusion is that: try not to drink alcohol, but if you have to, maybe try a glass of white wine.

Cake for breakfast may help weight loss, is it too good to be true?

A new Israeli study, published in Steroids journal in December 2011, shows encouraging and wonderful findings for cake and chocolate lovers, like myself.

In this study, two groups of women were put on 1,400-calorie diets. One group was following a low-carbohydrate plan with a smaller breakfast (300 calories) and a larger dinner, while the other group was eating protein and carbohydrate rich foods with a breakfast (600 calories) including cake, chocolate, or a cookie and then a smaller supper.

At the end of the diet, which lasted four months, the average weight lost by the participants in both groups was similar. But after another four months, the small-breakfast group regained about two-thirds of what they'd dropped while the other group continued to lose an additional 15 pounds.


So, how wonderful! A sweet dish at breakfast time may actually help weight loss diets. In the morning, when the body’s metabolic rate is faster, measured consumption of sweets can reduce appetite for sweets during the rest of the day. I could surely follow this one myself.

Walking briskly beating fat genes?

I come across an article regarding a study conducted by Qibin Qi, a researcher at Harvard School of Public Health. Based on his research, apparently we should blame our inherited genes for obesity, at least for 50% of the cases. Since we can't really change our parents, it makes it particularly difficult to fight the weight. In this study, Qi and his colleagues proposed a next-to-the-best solution.

They analyzed data from 12,000 people, measured how many "fat genes" each participant had, then looked at his or her body mass index (BMI). The studies included also data about how much time people spent watch TV and walking.

The motivating math: those who briskly walked an hour a day had a 0.06 decrease in BMI and those who spent two hours a day in front of TV had a 0.03 increase. Every 0.2 increase in BMI is related to 1 pound in weight.

We know from a long time that exercising help weight loss. But it is still interesting to see some quantitative numbers.

Vitamin E: cancer promoter or preventer?

Question of whether vitamin E prevents or promotes cancer has been widely debated in scientific journals and in the news media. Recently the research conducted by the scientists at Rutgers seems answer the question.

They believe that two forms of vitamin E, natural forms found in food and the high-dose synthetic E in most supplements, have different effect. The natural forms may lower cancer risk while the synthetic E may actually cancels the benefit of the good vitamin E from food and perhaps increasing the odds to get cancer.

So I guess we probably should rely on foods such as vegetable oil and nuts, not too much on the supplement.

More detail info can be found here: http://news.rutgers.edu/medrel/news-releases/2012/04/rutgers-study-vitami-20120420

Cherry, miracle cure for gout?

Ever since my husband had several gout attacks this year, we are forced to pay more attention to this problem. It is not so hard to find the long list of foods that are supposed to avoid. It makes you wonder what are there left to eat?

Reading through different forums, multiple people saying that cherry or cherry juice is working for their gout. So I spend sometime to learn more about this.

It is always very encouraging to see a remedy has been working on other people. Several examples:

"I have had a little soreness for the last couple months in my right foot. Last night; it got so sore after work that all I wanted to do was lay down and watch tv so my wife and I went out to Price Choppers and found Sour Cherries in a Jar Sweetened). I ate a small dish of them when I got home. This am; my foot feels great."

"The Cherry juice remedy works. I have gout and ran out of medicine so I tried concentrated cherry juice it took away the gout in under 24 hours. I did not believe it till I tried it."

"My husband had a very painful gout attack in his large toe which was going into its second day. He drank an eight ounce glass of water mixed with two tablespoons of black cherry concentrate. He felt 80 percent better within a few hours. He then drank another glass of the same mixture and could bend his toe without pain after 6 hours. "

But is there any scientific evidence suggesting cherry is actually good for gout? Any possible explanations?

In one article I found in Natural Medicine Journal, "Health Effects of Tart Cherries", there is a section dedicated to "Cherris and Gout". In fact, the very first credible report of medical benefit from cherries was published in the Texas Reports on Biology and Medicine in 1950 by Ludwig Blau, MD, who himself noticed that eating cherries reduced his own gout symptoms. He tested his ‘remedy’ on 12 other gout sufferers before writing his article. Here is the reference of the original publication.

Blau LW. Cherry diet control for gout and arthritis. Tex Rep Biol Med. 1950;8(3):309-311

"The research conducted by the US Department of Agriculture research facility in Davis, Calif., in 2003 is probably the most direct research related to cherry's effect on reducing uric acid. Ten healthy women, aged 22 to 40 years, consumed about 45 sweet cherries (Prunus avium), or 280 grams, after an overnight fast. Five hours later plasma urate levels had decreased from 214 to 183 umol/L. At 3 hours after consumption, urinary urate levels had increased from 202 to 350 umol/mmol creatinine. Consumption of other fruits did not produce significant changes."

There are also multiple publications showing that cherry has effect on reducing blood levels of substances associated with inflammation and immune cell activity.


Jacob RA, Spinozzi GM, Simon VA, Kelley DS, Prior RL, Hess-Pierce B, Kader AA. Consumption of cherries lowers plasma urate in healthy women. J Nutr. 2003;133(6):1826-1829.
Tall JM, Seeram NP, Zhao C, Nair MG, Meyer RA, Raja SN. Tart cherry anthocyanins suppress inflammation-induced pain behavior in rat. Behav Brain Res. 2004;153(1):181-188.
He YH, Xiao C, Wang YS, et al. [Antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects of cyanidin from cherries on rat adjuvant-induced arthritis]. Zhongguo Zhong Yao Za Zhi. 2005;30(20):1602-1605.
He YH, Zhou J, Wang YS, et al. Anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative effects of cherries on Freund's adjuvant-induced arthritis in rats. Scand J Rheumatol. 2006;35(5):356-358.


However, none of these experiments enrolled people actually having gout and specifically assessed the effects of cherries or cherry juice to prevent or treat gout.

Be careful of fructose!!

A glass of tart cherry juice made by diluting concentrate contains about 12.5 grams of fructose. Based on a 2010 study that consuming fructose-rich beverages is associated with a higher risk of gout. This finding resulted from an analysis of data from the Nurses' Health Study, a cohort study that spanned 22 years and included data from 78,906 women. One glass of orange juice, containing about 10.5 grams of fructose, per day increased the relative risk of a gout attack to 1.41.

Considering this fructose information, one could argue that cherry juice is not suitable for gout patients to drink frequently. Fructose-free cherry extracts might be more appropriate and effective for gout patients than juice concentrates.

My takeaway

I really do not see too much harm on trying cherry. As long as not to eat or drink too much, considering the fructose level. I personally believe more in natural food than medicine. So if it has been working on so many people and have some scientific support, it is good enough. Besides, I have not really read any case after eat or drink cherry become worse.