Today, you don’t have to be rich (or even a man) to suffer from gout — just fat. And since more people are fatter than ever before, more people are also battling the foot pain that marks this condition.

New numbers show that 4 percent — or 8.3 million Americans — fought gout in 2008, compared to just 1 percent between 1988 and 1994.

That’s a 400-percent increase inside of a generation — and in the coming years, it could get even worse. Recent government numbers show 21 percent of us have high levels of the uric acid responsible for gout.

That’s an increase of 700 percent from the surveys taken between 1988 and 1994.

But whatever you do, don’t turn to Big Pharma’s solution for gout. Drugs designed to treat the problem have been known to cause nausea, joint pain, and even liver problems. They’ve also been linked to chest pain, vomiting, bruising, constipation, allergic reactions, and even more gout flare-ups.

There are better ways to beat gout, and you can get some of the most immediate relief with something that was often dismissed as a folk remedy — until a recent study found it really worked.

Researchers say 20 cherries eaten over 48 hours can reduce the risk of a gout attack by 50 percent, while cherry extract slashed the odds by 40 percent. I’ve noticed cherry juice popping up on supermarket shelves, so feel free to give that a try. Just make sure it’s 100 percent cherry juice and not cherry-flavored sugar water.

If you don’t have any cherries handy, try celery. Celery can keep the enzyme that produces uric acid in check, and some people have reported gout relief from as little as a single stalk.

Others need more — nearly an entire bunch — and all the peanut butter in the world won’t make it any easier to eat that much. If that’s the case, try 75mg of celery seed extract, twice a day, instead.

You don’t have to be rich to get gout. And since celery — and celery seed — is cheap and plentiful, you don’t have to be rich to beat it, either.

It’s fat in your diet.

We’ve known for ages that the brain thrives on healthy fats, and now researchers say they can actually see the reaction unfold — and that the right fatty acids can dramatically raise spirits in minutes.

The researchers recruited 12 healthy, non-obese volunteers and randomly assigned them to get either a solution of fatty acids or saline during a series of mood-altering experiments.

To make sure no one knew whether they were getting the fatty acids or the saline solution, the volunteers were fed via gastric tubes. (Aren’t you glad you didn’t volunteer for this study?)

The volunteers also had to listen to depressing music and watch images of sad faces, all while connected to functional MRI machines so researchers could watch for changes in brain activity as the experiments unfolded.

The researchers wrote in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that the music and pictures caused moods to dip by an average of 2.5 points on a 10-point scale before anyone was given either solution.

Once those gastric tubes kicked in, however, the volunteers given fatty acids saw a quick rebound — eventually losing just one point on that 10-point scale.

The saline group, on the other hand, saw no changes.

The MRIs backed up what the patients reported: The music and images altered brain activity by up to 4 percent, which may not sound like much, but actually represents a huge change.

Once again, fatty acids reversed the negative activity, leading to changes in less than one percent of the brain.

Compare that to antidepressant drugs, which can take weeks to work — if they even work at all (and since most of them barely beat placebos in studies, don’t bet your dinner on it).

It’s not the first link between fatty food and a good mood. A 1998 study found that a single month of low-fat dieting was enough to boost anger and hostility. Other studies have linked low cholesterol – both in the diet and in the blood — to depression and even suicide.

Yet the mainstream — and even the U.S. government — wants you to get less of those fats?

I’d get angry… but I can’t right now. I just had a steak.

All that sugar is the fastest way to put yourself at risk for heart disease — and you can see the damage in just two weeks.

Forty-eight volunteers between the ages of 18 and 40 were asked to spend five weeks limiting added sugars to a single eight-ounce cup of fruit juice a day, bringing them all down to an equal level, sugar-wise.

Then, they were divided into three groups and given 25 percent of their daily calories from one of three types of sugar: glucose, fructose, or high-fructose corn syrup.

For the HFCS group, that’s the equivalent of 3.7 cans of soda a day for women and 4.4 cans for men — a lot of soda (and a lot of sugar), but still less than what you’ll find in a “Double Gulp” at your local 7-11.

After two weeks on this government-approved sugar high, the volunteers who had been getting their calories from fructose and high-fructose corn syrup had significant bumps in their levels of deadly triglycerides as well as a rise in LDL cholesterol.

They even had more apolipoprotein-B, a protein linked to plaque in the arteries, according to the study that will appear this fall in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

If that’s what two weeks of all that sugar will do to you, imagine what’ll happen to your body in two months, two years or two decades — if you even make it that far.

The study also offers more proof that you don’t have to eat fat to send your cholesterol levels through the roof. Sugar will do that for you all by itself. Natural fats, on the other hand, can actually help keep cholesterol levels under control as well as lower your blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

Yet the same government that wants you to eat more sugar is constantly urging you to avoid fat — putting you on a collision course with diabetes, heart disease, and a premature demise.

The lesson here: No matter what Uncle Sam says, no amount of added sugars are an acceptable part of the diet.

I know, you can’t always avoid them… and everyone is going to indulge here and there.

But as a daily ration? Forget it.

Sort of.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley say they’ve isolated the gene responsible for turning carbohydrates into fat in your liver. They call it DNA-PK, according to research published in the journal Cell.

To test their theory, they created some Frankenstein mice born with that DNA-PK gene disabled. And when these mice were allowed to shovel down the carbs, they didn’t get fat. The mice also had lower levels of blood cholesterol.

Now, some folks will tell you this new discovery means there’s now a solution for obesity in sight, perhaps some form of gene therapy.

Now, you can wait for that cure till the cows come home, but hidden in this study is an answer you can take with you right now.

All those carbs – the ones you’re told to eat on that low-fat, high-carb diet I call the Torture Chamber Diet – are turned into fat after you eat them. Not only that, they boost your cholesterol levels and put you at risk for heart disease. It’s just how our bodies work – it’s encoded in our DNA.

The answer, then, is to escape the "torture chamber" and start enjoying the kind of diet that’s better for your body. Forget the low-fat hype. Just ease off on the carbs (and especially avoid all those processed foods) and start enjoying balanced meals with healthy proteins, good fats and extra vegetables.

You’ll lose weight and lower your risk for diabetes and heart disease. You’ll look great, feel great and you can do it on your own, by managing your own diet and lifestyle.

And you won’t have to wait for some science-fiction treatment to come along and fix you up.