Have any practitioners treated patients when the patient is taking allopurinol?
Did the remedy work OK despite this medication?
Have you then been able to persuade the patient to reduce allopurinol, and if so, under what protocol?
[Patients who have had gout are very reluctant to give up this preventative medication owing to the severe pain of the disease]

Strictly speaking, the medical reason for using Allopurinol is to prevent long-term renal damage from uric acid chrystals as well as short-term flare-ups of joint pain. So as long as you are in a positon to check the blood uric acid levels regularly, there should be no problem with stopping the allopurinol. Otherwise, you could be consigning the patient to a premature end (and yourself to the lawcourts). If a remedy is effective then I believe it should bring the uric acid level down to normal. But as long as the patient fully understands the issues involved then you should have no problem - and since many patients get breakthrough gout attacks despite their prophylaxis, I see no reason why you can't treat them anyway.

Thank you Wexdoc. What is a safe and sensible time interval between blood tests for uric acid levels please?

My father, who has been a long-term sufferer of gout, swears by cherry extract. He takes 15 capsules daily, but no medicine anymore.

Anne: There's no recommended frequency for blood tests but experience tells me that once the uric acid level is normal - then perhaps check after 6 months then annually for a couple of years. Something like that. The only short term reaction is an acute gout atack and the patient will soon tell you about that.

Love the cherry juice idea - we need more naturopathic info like that. So simple. Actually, my mother-in-law eats 10 cherries a day with great benefit for her osteroarthritis. Anyone else there heard of golden sultanas soaked in gin for RA? (another patient cured herself with this).

Dear Anna,

You're not going to believe this, but you can cure gout with cherry juice! I read it in a book put out by Prevention Magazine some 15 years ago. I tried it out on my husband who had gout at the time, and it worked!

Meanwhile, daily low-potency prescribing allows us to treat chronic disease without having to take people off their drugs. We're not in a legal position to do that anyway. If you know the remedy, feel free to prescribe it in a 6C three times a day; it should work regardless of the prescription drug.

Sincerely,

Snoopy

Some time ago a friend very happily ate golden sultanas soaked in gin. Wasn't successful but it was later found he had degenerative joint disease, not RA as he had suspected. However, he did not much mind taking his medicine during that time!

WEll at least there are rather tasty consolations for those poor people afflicted with joint pains of various kinds.

I was a bit disappointed about the testing WExdoc because I had hoped that i might be able to reassure a patient giving up allopurinol that an episode of gout could be avoided categorically by having blood tests to monitor uric acid levels, and that an increasing level would show up and precede an episode of gout, so that it could be avoided. The trouble with gout is that it seems to be so unbearably painful that grown men will not risk anything that might bring it back.

Unfortunately, the relationship between attacks and blood levels does not seem as clear as that, Anna. To totally confuse matters, you can also get raised urate levels without any clinical gout and clinical gout with normal urate levels. For a much more thorough explanation than this, go to http://www.aafp.org/afp/990401ap/1799.html