Rooibos Tea (Redbush Tea) for Gout

December 10, 2020

June 2, 2018

Rooibos tea has been marketed for its health properties for many years. So we have discussed its value for gout sufferers without any useful scientific evidence. But now scientists have shown that rooibos tea can work as a herbal form of allopurinol. So read on to see if this herbal uric acid treatment is right for you.

Rooibos Tea for Gout Audience

I wrote Rooibos Tea for Gout to help Gout Herbalists understand the choices they might make when planning uric acid treatment. Because they need effective alternatives to allopurinol and other uric acid treatments that are available for Gout Patients. But if you don’t know what type of gout person you are, please read Questions for Gout Sufferers before you read the rest of this article.

Rooibos Tea for Gout Study

This is my review of an investigation of uric acid treatment from Rooibos Tea extracts^[1].

Rooibos tea is a traditional South African drink that is now readily available worldwide. It is also known as redbush tea. Confusingly this is often called red tea, but this study is all about green rooibos tea which is the unfermented kind. This is important because the fermented variety of this tea loses the important compounds that are associated with green rooibos. Such compounds have been linked with decreased inflammation, blood sugar, and cholesterol benefits.

This study investigates Xanthine Oxidase (XO) inhibition and lower uric acid in mice. The scientists extracted and prepared aspalathin treatments at varying strengths from green rooibos leaves and stems. Then various tests proved that green rooibos tea extract:

Reduces Xanthine Oxidase in a dose-dependent manner.
In turn, this reduces uric acid in the blood.

Rooibos Tea for Your Gout

There are 2 significant limitations to this study. Firstly, it deals with mice, not gouty humans. Secondly, it does not provide human dose information for gout treatment.

But it does show that green rooibos makes a good candidate for future gout studies in humans.

Upon confirmation of the results in a human study, the extracts of unfermented rooibos are expected to be used for the prevention of gout and hyperuricemia.

Therefore, gout herbalists who want to try this herbal uric acid medicine should be able to experiment by drinking different amounts of green rooibos tea. As with all uric acid treatments, you must arrange for frequent blood tests for uric acid, kidney function, and liver function.

Rooibos Tea for Gout References

Kondo, Makoto, Yoshiaki Hirano, Masahiro Nishio, Yutaka Furuya, Hiromichi Nakamura, and Tsuyoshi Watanabe. “Xanthine oxidase inhibitory activity and hypouricemic effect of aspalathin from unfermented rooibos.” Journal of food science 78, no. 12 (2013). Redbush Tea Herbal Allopurinol PDF.