Ordering from CanadianPharmacyMeds.com, we were paying about 48 cents per pill for Colchicine a couple of years ago. I don’t know what the current price is, but you can look it up at the website.
Thanks for the information-- if the K doesn’t work I will look into CPMeds.
I would posit that most people’s main sources of potassium are not acutally bananas, although those are the most famous source of potassium. But tomatoes (including canned tomato sauce), potatoes, milk products and beef make up a big part of the average American diet, and are also decent sources of potassium. High Potassium Food List - Foods Rich in Potassium
*Most *people are able to get enough potassium through diet. If you can’t, though, supplements are cheap. Just check with your doctor first, because the zombie OP is correct about the pretty awful side effects of too much potassium.
However, I will add that black cherry juice has NOT been shown to be effective in treating or preventing gout. Too bad. It did look promising back when the OP was written.
Rich Mann, are you still following?
Rich source of potassium: I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned in this thread yet…
prune juice.
According to the bottle I have, one 8-oz cup has 12% RDA of potassium. (ETA: 430 mg)
I’ve been on Allopurinol for my gout and it’s worked very well, with no side effects. Since my diagnosis (got a new doctor who, unlike my other doctors, didn’t immediately say “oh, you’re too young for gout”) I’ve cut back on alcohol and eliminated many of the trigger foods like organ meats, shellfish, and mushrooms, and I believe that’s helped as well. Keeping hydrated and getting regular exercise is a good idea, also.
Went through the whole stage of everybody giving me their folk remedies. None of them helped; in fact I think the cranberry juice advice is about the worst thing you can recommend (one study found it RAISES uric acid levels).
See your doctor, drink more water, lay off the liver, lobster, mushrooms & beer, and get some exercise.
Yep. I’ve been taking it almost two years and haven’t had a flare-up; my uric acid levels have been quite low on my last two blood tests. Allopurinol is cheap and (as far as I can tell) side-effect-free.
Gonna probably have to take it forever, but oh well. It actually worked, where cranberry juice and diet modifications didn’t. (And it’s not like I was consuming a lot of herring and sweetbreads to begin with.)
I decided to get some precise numbers on the potassium content of foods.
The US Department of Agriculture has a site which looks to have omitted little:
USDA: Potassium (K) mg Foods per Common Measure, sorted alphabetically
Blackstrap Molasses is the clear winner with a K content of 24.9mg per g.
1tbsp Blackstrap weighs 20g and provides 11% of the 4700g/day RDA according
to the USDA.
The K content runner-up is Tomato Paste, 10.1mg/g.
After adding up the K content values for most of my usual dietary items I found
I was certainly far under 50% RDA, and might be lower than 33% on most days.
Blackstrap has been an on-and-off item in my diet all my adult life, but mostly off
for no particularly good reason. Coincidentally I had gone on a Blackstrap “on” cycle
a few days before reading OP: 32fl oz for $9.88, not cheap, but Blackstrap contains
other dietary needs besides potassium.
The product label defines 1tbsp as 22g, and claims it contains 20% RDA. That is
nearly twice the USDA value, and I may call the producer’s toll-free number about
the discrepancy.
I also bought 300 3% RDA K gluconate tablets ($10.49) on the theory that not all
compounds containing K may be created equal as far as anti-gout efficacy. Also,
I was wondering if it might be the Gluconic Acid rather than the K which might be
delivering the bang for the buck, or if it was necessary to take the two together to
have any effect on gout.
I plan to start regular consumption of Blackstrap (1-2 tbsp/day) plus daily doses
of Tomato Paste, and some other high-K foods such as White and Azuki Beans
and unskinned baked potatos. Maybe something will work. I sure hope so.
Well damn.
The potassium regimen seemed to work for 60 days, but then:
(a) I developed a full-flidged gout attack, which 12 K gluconate doses did nothing for,
and (b) I found out at This Site that among the 50 medications with which K gluconate
has potentially harmful combination effects is lisinopril, a daily requirement for me.
Kidney failure and cardiac arrest are two of the K g + lisinopril risks.
So- no more K gluconate supplements.
Many years ago I tried a 2-4 tbsp per day regimen of concentrated cherry juice, and did
not have an attack for over 400 days, by far the longest gout-free spell since I first started
getting gout. I dropped the cherry juice after I finally got an attack and tried unsuccessfully
to get rid of it with a huge (30 tbsp per day) dose increase. Maybe I’ll go back to the cherry
juice and just resign myself to having to use real medicine if I have an attack.