Eating cherries in their many forms and varieties, like canned, frozen, raw, cooked, tart, pill, sweet and black are thought of been beneficial to treat gout. Consuming dried cherries, fresh or juiced are all good. Eating about 25 cherries are ten times stronger than aspirin and other ordinary pain-relievers. But if you get a gout attack or flare up, how many cherries should you eat? Some suggest that 30 to 40 every 4 hours is advisable during a gout attack and the same amount daily for prevention reasons; or simply eat minimum a cup of fresh or dried cherries after each meal, which is very effective for the pain treatment. About 20 cherries equal 25 milligrams of anthocyanins, the daily dose that should be taken, either in juice or eating the fruit for preventative measures. You can even drink a cup of cherry juice, black cherry juice or tart cherry juice twice a day or 2 tablespoons of concentrated cherry powder with one cup of water.
You can easily find cherry juice in your local health food store or online. It might seem strange that cherries would lower your risk of gout, as this condition is often associated with sugar, fructose and fruit juice consumption. But you only need to eat a small amount of cherries to get the benefit, meaning the sugar contribution is small. 10 sweet cherries or 1 cup of sour cherries contain about 4 grams of fructose, 25 cherries would put you at 10 grams of fructose. Berries, apples, pineapple, oranges, bananas and grapes have way more sugar per 100g than cherries. You would need to eat more than 60 cherries to put you over the limit where the fructose of the cherry might start affecting you negatively and produce higher uric acid levels. I think eating 12 to 25 cherries daily is ideal. Limiting fructose/sugar in your diet is one of the most important parts of managing and preventing gout attacks.
If you have gout, it’s imperative to restrict your fructose/sugar intake to below 25 grams a day, including from fruit, as fructose/sugar drives up uric acid levels in your body. Remember treatments vary according to different people; you should adjust the dose accordingly. For example, regular cherry concentrate is very sweet and thick. One tablespoon equals to about 45 to 60 cherries. On a side note, whenever looking for cherry-based products it would be better if made of tart cherries, because they are the ones more effective among all other cherries to fight arthritis, working better in the prevention and treatment of this painful condition, by reducing the levels of uric acid and breaking up the crystals that are responsible for the joint pain. Generally, tart cherries have been found to have higher concentrations of phenolics and anthocyanins than sweet cherries. Tart cherries are also slightly lower in sugar