Cherries and the gout diet
It’s always reassuring to get scientific proof of home remedies for gout! And a study reported in the Journal of Nutrition about the effect of cherry consumption on the incidence of gout proves what some of us always knew….. eating cherries helps with gout!
More accurately, the study looked at the effect of cherry consumption on plasma urate level, because, as you know, plasma urate level is linked very closely to the formation of urate crystals in the joint, and the subsequent pain of gout.
The researchers, led by Robert A Jacob, studied the effect of eating 280 g cherries on plasma urate levels in 10 healthy women between the ages of 22 and 40. They found a really significant drop from around 214 – 183 micromoles per litre. The amount of urate in the women’s urine increased as well. All of this seems to conclusively show that the anecdotal evidence of cherries as an essential part of a gout diet is absolutely true.
The question is, what part of the cherry is responsible for this health benefit? While we know that eating cherries and drinking cherry juice has a widespread reputation as being very good for you, particularly where arthritis is concerned, what part of the cherry is responsible for the anti-gout and anti-inflammatory effect?
Studies using gout sufferers, rather than non-gout-sufferers, also show a significant reduction in urate levels and gout attacks. In actual fact, it really is the anthocyanins that are responsible, and also a compound called cyanidin. We know that these compounds have antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties are almost as effective as commercial medications!
Work by Naomi Schlesinger and Michael Schlesinger has confirmed this. They studied the effect of cherry juice concentrate on gout attacks.
They specifically set out to study whether or not cherry juice concentrate was useful for preventing gout flareups. One study compared the effectiveness of pomegranate juice and cherry juice concentrate. In another study they studied the effect of taking cherry concentrate for 4 months. And finally they conducted a study to investigate the effect of cherry juice concentrate on the interleukins secreted by monocytic cells when they were exposed to urate crystals in experimental conditions.
A fruity diet for gout!
When you think about it, this is an absolutely superb piece of experimental work to conduct. I can imagine it was both fun and satisfying – very useful to millions of people, I’d say, having had many gout attacks myself! As a matter of fact I actually used cherry juice in the form of cherry juice concentrate, the variety known as “Cherry Active”.
This comes as either capsules or liquid concentrate, and I have found it to be very effective in preventing my own attacks of gout. And that’s without scientific studies are be recommending it! In fact I think it’s actually an essential part of any gout diet.
You may be particularly interested to read this study, which certainly does provide a lot of evidence to support the idea that cherries are a useful prophylactic against gout attacks. Let’s look at the conclusions.
To start with, it was known as long ago as 1950 that eating cherries could reduce serum urate levels and prevent flareups. In the first study by the Schlesingers, as mentioned above, cherry juice concentrate was compared with pomegranate juice concentrate as a way of preventing gout flareups.
In a group of 18 people who were known to have gout (proved by analyzing the crystals in the joints), two groups of people received a tablespoon of cherry juice twice daily or a tablespoon of pomegranate juice twice daily. They also continued taking any of their existing medication. The average number of flareups in people taking cherry juice concentrate reduced from around 5 every four months to an average of 1.5 every four months after taking cherry juice for 120 days. This was a highly significant result.
In the pomegranate juice group, the effect was much less marked: in fact, only one in five of the people in the pomegranate juice avoided flareups while they were taking it, although there was a slight reduction overall.
Indeed, so successful was the cherry juice is a medication against gout flareups that around half of the patients in the cherry juice group stopped taking their painkillers within 60 days of starting the cherry juice drink!
What’s interesting about this is that the serum urate levels did not reduce very much, so the reduction in gout attacks must be caused by a reduction in inflammation produced by the urate crystals in the joint, or a reduction in the number of urate crystals in the joint. (It also probably means the older experiments were invalid.)
In the second study, people who had been taking cherry juice for 4 months or more were studied to see what effect it had on their gout.
In a group of 24 people who had crystals in the joints, one tablespoon of cherry juice twice daily reduced the number of gout flareups from around 7 a year to 2 per year.
And because some of these people were actually not able to take urate lowering therapy (ULT), this must have been an immense relief to them. Even among the men and women who were taking ULT, the average of 7 gout flareups per year before they started cherry juice concentrate went down to around 2.5 after starting cherry juice. Once again, cherry juice did not alter the level of serum urate in these people.
In the third study, as you might recall, the investigators looked into the effect of cherry juice on inflammatory responses in the body. They cultured immune cells in experimental conditions, and added both urate crystals and dilutions of cherry juice concentrate at body temperature.
They discovered was that cherry juice concentrate inhibited the secretion of inflammatory substances by up to 60%. (Pomegranate juice didn’t really have any effect at all.) So this all demonstrates that cherry juice really is an effective part of a gout diet.
Cherry juice concentrate is, apart from being delicious, actually well tolerated by most people, allows people to stop taking anti-inflammatory drugs, and reduces gout flareups by 50% or more.
Bear in mind that this was an average across the whole group, and in fact 36% of the patients who were not taking ULT were actually free of gout flareups after four months of consuming cherry juice! In fact cherry juice actually reduces gout flareups whether or not people are on ULT!
Obviously this report contradicts previous ones which have suggested that cherries actually reduce serum urate levels. But there you go – at least we know it works! And it seems to work with both sweet and bitter cherries. We know that gout inflammation is caused by urate crystals stimulating interleukin release by monocytes (which are part of the immune system’s cells). And we also know that cherry juice inhibits the secretion of interleukins.
This is a wonderful discovery — although of course if you’ve been taking cherry juice yourself as part of a gout diet, you probably don’t think of it as a discovery! But the news will bring massive hope to all gout sufferers.
