Vitamins for Gout
If you have gout, you’ll put up with the symptoms the first episode, but then do whatever you possibly can to prevent the next one.
One of the things you may not have heard yet is that Vitamin C, pantothenic acid and other vitamins for gout are important to help prevent flare-ups.
Vitamin B5 and the Stress Connection
Pantothenic acid is one of the vitamins involved in the conversion of uric acid – which causes gout attacks. Vitamin C is another one. Pantothenic acid is one of the B vitamins (vitamin B5). It’s depleted when you’re under a lot of stress as is vitamin C. Yet interestingly, doctors don’t go beyond the thought that stress is one of the precipitating factors that causes a gout attack. Looking beyond stress as to what else happens when there is stress to find various deficiencies is the key to finding a solution.
Pantothenic acid isn’t found in high amounts in any food. It’s easily supplied by a pantothenic acid supplement. How much do you need? About 500 mg vitamin B5 is a good place to start, but you can take a lot more – you could even take it four times a day when you have a gout attack. It’s a B vitamin that is excreted through the urine if you have more than what your body can handle.
Beware of Researchers’ Conclusions
In one study on vitamin C and gout, 40 patients with gout were separated into two groups. Both groups received allopurinol, the standard drug for gout while one group of 20 patients also received a small dosage of vitamin C – only 500 mg daily. However, the researchers did not find increased excretion of uric acid in the patients. They concluded that vitamin C doesn’t necessarily help with gout; however the same researchers found that those who have higher vitamin C levels have fewer gout attacks.
Reading research like this, you may easily give up and not take your vitamin C. However, don’t give up, as vitamin C has many important functions in the body and you’ll always do better with it than without it.
There are many reasons why you shouldn’t give up, and most are based on how the scientists ran the study. First of all, my personal view is that they did not give a high enough dosage of vitamin C. When we go to the real vitamin C experts, the Linus Pauling Institute, we find that a meta-analysis of 14 other studies did show that uric acid was decreased by a supplement of only 500 mg per day over 30 days in patients with gout.
Evaluate Other Experts Work, Too
Another study of over 46,000 men with gout – instead of 40 people with gout – over a 20-year time frame found that those with the highest levels of vitamin C had the fewest incidents of gout. Another study of 1387 men who had high intakes of vitamin C found an association of lower levels of uric acid in the blood.
It just goes to show you that you have to really scrutinize the new medical studies that are in the media. When they report that vitamins and minerals don’t work, they are often trying to muscle in their viewpoint of not taking supplements of any kind. The science methodology they use is often highly flawed.
I will always continue to give 2000 mg vitamin C daily as a supplement along with 500 mg pantothenic acid to my patients with gout. And I’ll always continue to see their rapid improvement.