Ayurvedic Treatment of Gout

by Sheela Rani Chunkath

Recently  a friend of mine was in great pain with inflammation of her large toe.  The first thing to suspect if you have serve pain in joints is gout.  Seems kind of strange that you would have isolated pain in your big toe but it could often indicate the beginning of gout and one needs to get the uric acid levels checked out.  If uric acid levels are higher than normal you need to treat for gout.

Sometimes acute gout attacks may also be triggered by unusual activity or illness.  In my friends case it seems to have been triggered by Chinese massage and acupressure of the foot.  While normally these could be beneficial, in her case it triggered a severe inflammation of the big toe.

When the uric acid levels were checked and the results came in the uric acid levels were normal.  But since there had been since inflammation and pain following unusual activity the patient was treated for vata rakta.  Vata rakta would encompass gout and other inflammatory conditions brought about by vitiation of blood and vayu .

In Ayurveda, there are excellent medicines available for treating vata rakta.  While this is not an easily treatable disease it can be well controlled by the use of kashayams such as balagudichyadi kashayam, a classical preparation.  There are patent medicines which contains extracts from the tuber of Gloriosa superba and Alpinia galangal.  Dasamoola kashayam is yet another combination of herbs which  is very beneficial in that it addresses the issue of swelling and inflammation.

In general, people who are prone for vata vitiation, in that they have joint pains or gouty arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis should avoid foods such as tubers, beans such as rajma, chana, cluster beans etc. and cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage etc.  So you may well wonder what vegetables are there to eat.  They would mostly be traditionally-grown vegetables such as snake gourd, ridge gourd, okra, drumsticks and brinjals.  Carrot and beetroot can also be included as they do not aggravate vayu.

So with diet restrictions and treatment with medicines one can get rid of the disease.  An allopathic doctor friend of mine asked me so are you  saying ayurveda can cure the disease.  It depends on the roga bala meaning how strong is the disease, is it of recent orign or has the disease taken a strong hold on you.  Many people come to an ayurvedic vaidyar as a last resort.  After spending valuable time and money on various forms of medicine they come to a vaidyar and expect miracles.  The beauty of ayurveda is that it can treat the cause and prevent further aggravation of the disease and perhaps cure it fully.  So if you were to approach an ayurvedic vaidyar when you have some cold, cough and headaches, the vaidyar can treat you and ensure that you don’t  get recurrences of the same.  But if you were to approach to vaidyar when you headache has become a severe migraine and your cold has affected the sinuses and you lungs, it could be more difficult to cure or the treatment could be prolonged .  Ayurveda helps you prevent disease to get those aches and pain treated at its first onset.  Ayurveda describes the progress of disease in Kriya kala perhaps warning both practitioners and patients that the time to treat a disease is at the stage of poorva roopa which is when the first prodromal signs appear.  Or perhaps it is best treated at the next stage or the causative stage which means you consult our vaidyar about you aharam and viharam, that is diet and lifestyle and proceed accordingly.

Yet another factor that could affect the prognosis of disease is rogi bala, that is the condition of the patient; is he otherwise fit, young etc.  old emaciated patients and the very young would be more difficult to treat.  So it could be worthwhile to consult an ayurvedic vaidyar when diseases are simple and when vitiation of the doshas can be corrected easily.  After a few consultations, the patient himself would learn what to do to prevent the occurrence of disease and to manage it if it were to appear.   For no disease suddenly appears, the body gives fair warming which we often ignore.

--- The writer is retired Additional Chief Secretary, Government of Tamil Nadu. She can be reached at Sheelarani.arogyamantra@gmail. com. Earlier articles can be accessed at http://arogyamantra.blogspot.com/