Easy Baking Soda For Gout

[Keith Taylor (GoutPal Admin)Keymaster]

You have probably read about baking soda for gout, here or around the Internet.

If not, search for baking soda or sodium bicarbonate using the Gout Search box near the top of this page.

Regular readers will know that personally, I avoid this treatment as I already have raised blood pressure, and have read that sodium bicarbonate can make this worse.

Other people have complained about the taste of baking soda. To an extent, you can mask this with, for example, fruit juice. Or …

[AerowootParticipant]

Hello…….I'm a new contributor to your forum and a gout sufferer.

As a matter of fact,at this very moment I am in the middle of an acute attack to the knee. I have had gout in both big toe joints,one ankle and now my knee. What a pleasure.

I have gone to the doctor each time and end up taking indomethacin and drinking lots of water for a couple days/weeks and it goes away. Everytime though, my blood uric acid level was never indicative of an attack which I know isn't unusual.

I used bicarb of soda off and on and think it helped in the past. Well this time I did it a little more scientifically if you will. Let me explain. I have a box of urinalysis test strips that check a myriad of things in the urine and yesterday I checked my urine pH value which was 5.0 and my knee was throbbing. After doing more online reading about bicarb of soda, I tried taking 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda with 4 ounces of water about every four hours on an empty stomach which was around four times between last nite and this morning. Also I have been taking 50mg Indomethacin three times a day.(Indomethacin for two whole days) This AM I noticed decreased swelling and much lessened pain. It was very hard bending my knee due to swelling and pain but it was ok when standing upright. At this moment I am sitting at my computer with both knees bent sitting, yesterday I had to sit sideways with my left leg straight out to the side to sit. I checked my urine pH this morning and it has gone from 5.0 to 6.5 overnite.I am continuing to drink water to help flush. I'll probably take a couple more doses today but cut it to two a day and monitor my urine pH level and go from there.

All I can tell anyone is I have had overnite results and see a change in my urine pH level which corresponded with pain and swelling being drastically reduced.

As for the sodium and blood pressure…..I read each tsp has about 616 mg of sodium in it. If you take this short term I'd suspect you would see a rise in your BP but it should go away soon after you stop the treatment. I'm not a doctor either….so maybe someone could add their two cents.

I am in no way recommending anyone try this without some serious research and consulting their physician.

[zip2playParticipant]

Aerowoot,

Interesting stuff…I always LOVE to experiment on myself and, better than that, to read a first hand report from someone else who did.

Food for thought: Your dosage of bicarbonate was rather low as witnessed by the urine pH of 6.5 which is STILL acidic. Hard to tell what is causing your relief, the bicarbonate or the relatively high dose indomethacin. And this salient fact:

[AerowootParticipant]

I originally bought the urine sticks for another issue but noticed when I used them the pH was always at the acid end of 5.0 which it was yesterday when I checked it prior to taking any soda. I haven't had any soda since early this AM and have been drinking water. My urine has been cloudy and my pain/swelling are continuing to go down. Still taking 50 mg Indo three times a day. Two days ago the Indo didn't seem to do much.I don't think 50 Mg is very high dose…..I'm at 8.0 pH now.

My soda dose was in line with what I was reading on several sites. I figured if it didn't work I could increase it. Maybe this time my episode isn't as severe as the others? The last in August 08 was a pain for about 2-3 weeks.

I flared up with no explanation Monday like a sore muscle in my knee….Tuesday it was quite stiff and sore then Wednesday I couldn't bend it very well…..samo samo Thursday.

My other episodes usually are at least two weeks with Indomethacin…..after that my stomach usually tells me its time to drop the Indo.

The only thing I did different this time was took soda like I said previously but on an empty stomach. We'll see how it goes from here.

[Keith Taylor (GoutPal Admin)Keymaster]

Here's the most interesting part of icuredmygout.org that first got me interested in the whole acid/alkali debate:

Note 1.  MSU crystals do not cause a gout attack if they are formed outside of cells (extracellular), e.g., in synovial fluid. When they are uncoated  inside cells (intracellular), they interact with neutrophils and cause a gout attack. Uric acid is a weak acid. Its solubility increases exponentially with the increase of pH.  Since baking soda increases the blood and body fluids pH, it makes uric acid more soluble for better excretion by the kidneys, hence, lessens the amount of MSU in the body and the chance of a gout attack. In the contrary, MSU is a weak base. Its solubility increases exponentially with the decrease of pH. When baking soda is consumed or administered through IV, it increases the blood CO2 level and decreases the pH inside cells (intracellular acidosis) all over the body, increases the solubility of MSU exponentially to dissolve the MSU crystals inside cells, eliminate the cause of current and future attacks, and cures the gout — a property that the conventional gout medicine do not possess. It is this “paradoxical” property of baking soda ( i.e., while it increases the pH outside of cells such as in  blood and body fluids, at the same time, it decreases the pH inside cells such as in the joint linings) that provides a double whammy to get rid of gout very quickly.

As I understand it, there are lots of ways to alkalize extracellular fluid – commonly, but not exclusively, reduce PRAL by increasing potassium, magnesium and calcium intake, without excess protein and phosphorous. I'm hoping this will avoid worsening the blood pressure through excess sodium (though a few more pounds off remains my elusive goal).

The question is, is there a safe way to decrease intracellular pH at the same time? Or is baking soda the only way to get this double whammy?

[AerowootParticipant]

Still passing off fluids…..pH about 7.5 now. Swelling/pain is going down and today I haven't taken any Indocimethacin yet or Bicarb either since Thursday. Just water/juices.

Tophi Terror commented that my move from 5.0 pH to 6.5 wasn't that much….the pH scale is based on a log scale….every change from one number to another is a power of ten change.

It seems by Monday everything should be back to normal or close to it. I tried several cans of beer last night to see if it irritated anything…it did not….just ran to the bathroom in what seemed more often than normal.

GoutPal : I'm curious….they say to keep your blood/body pH within line you should eat lots of citrus fruits……these fruits are high in acid….how can this work? I know from reading, lemon juice is on the top of the food alkaline scale but I'm still at a loss as to how an acid can do this. Any thoughts?

[Keith Taylor (GoutPal Admin)Keymaster]

Aerowoot said:

GoutPal : I'm curious….they say to keep your blood/body pH within line you should eat lots of citrus fruits……these fruits are high in acid….how can this work? I know from reading, lemon juice is on the top of the food alkaline scale but I'm still at a loss as to how an acid can do this. Any thoughts?

---

The pH of food we put in our mouths is very different from the affect of pH on the body when food is digested. Minerals and other nutrients in food can raise or lower urine pH, and to a lesser extent, affect blood pH.

This is not easy to specifically predict the exact change, and for the tables I use Potential Renal Acid Load, which is a good approximation of how much the nutrients in food are likely to affect pH. The proof is in the urine test – a good balance of some acidifying foods with more alkalyzing foods should raise pH, unless other health or environment factors confound this.

For the specifics on lemons, there are few better places to look than pHbalance » Lemons Alkaline?

[zip2playParticipant]

aerowoot,

I throw my hands up in despair over these acidyzing and alkalinizing foods. I suspect a lot of it is “new age” hot air to selll fruits and vegetables. Acid is acid and base is base.

The only break from that kind of thinking is that with stomach acid with a pH around 1, ANYTHING added is an alkalyzing agent in that ANYTHING except pure hydrochloric acid will raise the pH of the stomach.

GP,

I am very skeptical of that voodoo stuff about alkalyzing the extracellular fluid and acidifying the intracellualr fluid at the same time. The usual and expected pattern is that if one side of an osmotic membrane is acidified, the membrane will allow the passage of neutralizing agents  accross the cell wall to partially neutalyze the other side. Thus an alkalinized synovial fluid will call for hydrogen atoms from the cells…this will thus ALKALINIZE the cells to achieve a new equilibrium. The net is that an added  base will alkalyze both the synobvial fluid AND the inner cells.

[weightliftingforbegginersParticipant]

goutPal said:

You have probably read about baking soda for gout, here or around the Internet.

If not, search for baking soda or sodium bicarbonate using the Gout Search box near the top of this page

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Fruits that are high in sodium bicarbonate?

[Author]

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