Gout Boy's Amazing Recovery

Monday morning my beloved woke up with terrible pain and swelling in his right foot. He was quite baffled by this, as both feet had been in full working order the night before when he had gone to bed. Could he have some mysterious "turned-over-too-many-times-in-his-sleep" injury? He is a strong, stoic stud-muffin type of guy with a generally high tolerance to pain but this was really bad. He could barely walk. So off to the doctor he went. There he was told he had gout.

I've known a few people who have had gout in the past. It is a form of arthritis that comes on quite suddenly, most often overnight and most often in the foot. However, it can affect just about any joint in the body. It can linger quite some time and be very debilitating.

I'm not one to put much stock in doctors and pills, so I did a little research to see if there might be some natural remedies which could be helpful for him. I came up with THIS website that offers an extensive report about Gout, along with several different home remedies.

At first it did sound a bit far fetched. While it had lots of good information, the idea that a simple thing like taking two teaspoons of baking soda in a glass of water every two hours could cure the problem sounded too good to be true.

However, hubby decided to give it a try, figuring he could fall back on traditional medicine if this did not work. He followed the directions and I'll be darned...by the VERY NEXT DAY he was feeling MUCH better. He still had a little tenderness, but he was vastly improved and was able to walk with almost no discomfort. By Wednesday he was absolutely fine. Anyone who knows gout knows that's just plain amazing.

Score one for the natural home remedies - wahoo! I'm glad he's feeling better AND glad that he did it without more meds with all their nasty side effects.

So I've been doing some reading about various "home remedies" for all sorts of ailments. Interesting stuff! Do you have any favorites?

I'm gathering a collection of them which I want to put together in a report I will print here on this blog under the title "Old Husband's Tales...folk widsom and health." It will have two categories - the most wild, absurd, dangerous or silly things that people think will help them get well when they are ailing AND things that have been shown to actually work.

Then I plan to do some exploring about the whole idea of sickness and health. How do we decide when we are just "under the weather" and when we are seriously ill?? Why are some sorts of sicknesses viewed as trivial and others as significant, even when the symptoms are not all that different?

So if you know about any old remedies, whether it's something you or your family actually tried, or something you've just heard about, please let me know.