If you are suffering from gout, paying attention to your diet will help greatly in controlling this painful disease. Gout is caused by a buildup of metabolic byproducts of uric acid in joints. The pain of gout comes from the accumulated needle-like crystals of a uric-acid salt known as monosodium urate. These crystals accumulate in joints and invade surrounding tissues during an acute attack. The immune system then floods the joints with neutrophils to remove injured tissue. The influx of neutrophils increases the pain and swelling; over the long term, this can destroy a joint.
Uric acid comes from the breakdown of purines, one of two classes of components of the complex proteins and amino acids that make up your DNA, RNA, and ATP. Your body can recycle purine, using the enzyme xanthine oxidase. But over-consumption of purine-rich foods will produce more uric acid than the xanthine oxidase system can handle. Also, excessive consumption of alcohol (and some medical conditions or their medications) can impair the enzyme system so that it cannot process normal levels of purine. Any of these imbalances can trigger an attack.
To control gout, you must control uric acid. The first step in controlling uric acid is reducing consumption of foods containing purines, since these foods increase uric acid production.
Alcohol must be avoided, since alcohol impairs kidney function and accelerates the buildup of uric acid in your system. It is also important to reduce consumption of refined carbohydrates and saturated fats, since these increase uric acid retention. High-protein diets introduce amino acids into the body which displace uric acid in the kidney’s cleansing apparatus and force it back into the bloodstream, raising uric acid concentration.
Good Gout Foods
You can eat as much of cherries as you want. Consuming 250 grams of fresh or canned cherries every day helps to lower uric acid levels and forestall gout attacks. Cherries, blueberries, and other dark and red-blue cherries are rich sources of anthocyanidins and other flavonoids. These natural healing agents reinforce the collagen matrix of cartilage and tendons. They also prevent the synthesis and release of histamine, leukotrienes, and prostaglandins, compounds that cause the intense pain of gout.
If you cannot eat cherries, try taking 125-250 milligrams of quercetin 3 times a day between meals. Quercetin also stops the synthesis and release of histamine, leukotrienes, and prostaglandins, and has some actions similar to the drug allopurinol. Bromelain, taken in doses of 125-250 milligrams with quercetin 3 times a day, increases the body’s absorption of quercetin and may break up uric acid crystal deposits. There are indications dandelion and stinging nettle may also break up uric acid deposits, since they help dissolve uric acid kidney stones.
Here’s a general diet guideline when you are diagnosed with Gout:
- Eliminate foods high in purine from your diet, including anchovies, baker’s and brewer’s yeast, bouillon, broth, caviar, consomme, dried beans and peas, goose, gravy, herring, mackerel, meat extracts (like Bovril), partridge, sardines, scallops, shrimp, sweetbreads, yeast extracts (such as Marmite and Vegemite), and organs like brain, heart, liver and kidneys.
- Curtail consumption of foods containing moderate amounts of purines, including asparagus, dried beans and legumes, fish, mushrooms, poultry, and spinach.
- Lose weight by reducing calories rather than by vigorous exercise (which increase uric acid production).
- Drink at least 8 glasses of water daily to dilute the uric acid concentration of urine.
- Avoid alcohol, especially beer (with its brewer’s yeast content).
- Eat cherries.
Nutritional Supplements
- Take quercetin and bromelain if you cannot eat cherries.
- Avoid trace mineral supplements containing molybdenum. Molybdenum surplus causes a condition very similar to gout.
- Avoid megadoses of Vitamn C. They may increase the production of uric acid.
- Avoid high doses (over 50 milligrams per day) of niacin. Niacin competes with uric acid for excretion into the urine.
- Avoid iron supplements. Excess iron in the bloodstream can cause uric acids to form in joints.
Gout Treatment
For reliable Gout treatment information, read Cure Gout Now; an easy to follow, comprehensively researched eBook by Lisa McDowell that shows you how to change your diet and gain control of your gout with useful strategies that have been proven to improve health for people with gout.
Find out how Lisa, a long-suffering wife of a gout victim, challenged the uncaring drug companies and made a shocking discovery that cured her husband once and for all.