Words from a Skeptic

Okay... I am a skeptic about these things, but I have been getting really annoyed by my gout attacks, and have decided not to go the drug route. I take Aleve when I feel an attack coming on, and that mitigates the symptoms pretty well, but the attack will still continue for several days. That brings me to report my experience with apple cider vinegar (ACV).

I was looking for a gout remedy online, and came across several articles on ACV. I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it, so I bought the Bragg's unfiltered raw ACV with the "mother."

I took some for several days a couple of weeks ago, didn't feel any different, so I stopped. I began to think that ACV probably had a placebo effect on people who were taking it.

Then I had an attack of gout in my left big toe this week. I took one Aleve every 12 hours, as I usually do, and went back to the vinegar treatment (about 1 TBS per day). I am happy to report that the attack was stopped dead in its tracks (and reversed) in about 2.5 days. That has never happened to me before, and I attribute it to the addition of the vinegar treatment to my regimen. I can also report that during the onset of the attack, I continued to eat salmon and drink red wine in pretty good quantities--so I didn't make any changes there.

As I mentioned, I am skeptical about "miracle cures" and things like that, but this does appear to work. I would like to know what the chemical mechanism is, and whether it has been laboratory-tested. The gout attack I had was literally reversed, and very quickly. It never became quite as painful as it has in the past. So I'll be sticking to the vinegar plan now.

If anyone can point us to an explanation of the chemical mechanism at work, that would be greatly appreciated.