146 Achieving pH Balance to Treat Specific Ailments
developed a brain tumor and could no longer carry out his duties as
the superintendent of an apartment building. Emily, despite her aches
and pains from arthritis, “to put bread on the table,” she said, took
over her husband’s job. Every morning she hauled plastic bags loaded
with garbage from the basement up a fl ight of stairs and dragged them
onto the curb; she swept the stairs and hallways and in the winter
shoveled snow off the sidewalk in front of the building. Emily carried
out these tasks despite wrists that were so stiff she couldn’t turn a
doorknob to open a door, throbbing pain in her toes, and heel spurs
that made her feel, while walking, as if she couldn’t carry the weight
of her body. She also had bursitis in her shoulders and pains in most
of her muscles.
Emily had probably inherited her bone problems from her father who
had had gout. It caused him far more pain than Emily felt from all her
bone problems put together. Gout develops from elevated levels of uric
acid in the blood that are converted into sodium urate crystals and depos-
ited in the toes, wrists, and earlobes. Joseph’s gout started in the joints of
his big toes and spread to the rest of his feet, infl aming and swelling the
muscles. This eventually caused the muscles in his feet to degenerate. He
became fl atfooted and had to wear slippers even when he went out.
Emily used the best remedy possible for gout. She ate cherries, a
treatment that Dr. Ludwig E. Blau tried on twelve individuals with
gout, every one of whom experienced great relief. The remedy worked
whether the cherries the subjects ate were canned or fresh, juiced or
eaten whole.^5 Dr. Blau found that they were also effective in healing
bursitis (calcifi cation of the pockets of synovial fl uid into which the
bone joints in the shoulder fi t).
Cherries remove the sodium urate crystals in and around the bone
joints by dissolving them. Once dissolved, they are easily eliminated.
How cherries dissolve the sodium urate crystals is another question,
but it is likely that the acid in the cherries breaks them up, just as vin-
egar can break down the calcium deposits in arthritic bone joints.
Emily got her quota of cherries in the form of a cherry liqueur that she
made from an old Romanian folk recipe. She mixed sour cherries, unfi l-
tered honey, blueberries, and vodka in a fl at pan and left it in the sun
for two weeks to ferment, then strained it. Drinking three cups of this
highly nutritious, low-alcohol-content beverage daily for two to three
weeks cured her gout as well as the bursitis in her shoulder.