What Is The Gout Diet And Can It Ease Gout Symptoms?

Content

• Foods To Include
• What Happens In Gout:
• Ways To Lower Uric Acid Levels Naturally
• Free Guidebook To Proximate Analysis Of Food
• Symptoms Of High Uric Acid
• How To Lower Uric Acid Levels With Diet

It’s also low in red and processed meats and sugary drinks, which are high-purine foods that people with gout are recommended to keep to a minimum. While there are foods that can increase uric acid levels, you can also eat in a way that has the opposite effect and helps reduce purines and uric acid levels. The DASH diet is of great interest to gout researchers at the moment. A study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology in 2016 found that people who followed the DASH diet for 30 days lowered their uric acid levels 0.35 mg/dL on average.

Here's what you might eat during a typical day on a gout diet. Eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, which provide complex carbohydrates. Avoid foods and beverages with high-fructose corn syrup, and limit consumption of naturally sweet fruit juices. Oranges' high vitamin C content makes them a beneficial food for gout sufferers. Soda is high in fructose, which can exacerbate pain and side effects associated with gout.

Foods To Include

Learn about symptoms, causes, treatments and medication for this painful condition. Gout is a type of arthritis causing pain and swelling in the joints. The symptoms usually occur as flares lasting for a week or two and then go away.

What Happens In Gout:

Low-fat dairy products such as milk, yogurt, and cheese are good sources of protein to substitute for meats and seafood . Another recommendation often given to people with gout is to lose weight if needed. Studies show that weight loss can help lower uric acid levels and possibly prevent attacks.

Ways To Lower Uric Acid Levels Naturally

It is important to note that whenever starting a uric acid lowering treatment, there is a risk of precipitating a gout flare. This generally can be avoided with the co-administration of prophylactic medications along with the uric acid lowering therapy. While there are no herbs or supplements that can stem an attack of gout, you might get some relief by drinking cherry juice or eating tart cherries in season. There is anecdotal evidence and some interesting research suggesting that the anthocyanins that give tart cherries their color may prove more effective than aspirin for pain relief. Although human studies haven’t been conducted, the Michigan researchers theorized that eating tart cherries daily has the potential to reduce pain related to inflammation, arthritis and gout. Starvation can also contribute to hyperuricemia – and so can ketosis, which mimics starvation in several respects.

Urine that contains more calcium, oxalate, or uric acid, increases the likelihood of developing kidney stones . People with mutations in other genes such as UCP2, SLC2A9, ABCG2, SLC17A1 or SLC17A3, can also have higher uric acid levels . Higher levels of uric acid occur when the kidneys don’t eliminate uric acid efficiently . Also, alcohol accelerates the breakdown of purines, thereby increasing the production of uric acid .

Treatments used for prevention, such as allopurinol can actually make things worse if given during an attack, and so need to be held back until the attack has resolved for several weeks. Collections of uric acid need to be searched for, and they can be in numerous locations (see Figures 7-10). X-ray shows characteristic changes of gout, including cysts in bone and erosions.

Tomatoes, which are also counted as a fruit rather than a vegetable, are good for your body and their high vitamin C content can help in reducing the uric acid levels. High level of uric acid in the body can cause various health issues like arthritis. When our body is not able to expel waste, it raises uric acid in the body, which form solid crystals in the joints, called gout. This leads to higher uric acid levels in your blood and urine.

At least one study demonstrated a decrease in uric acid levels, in individuals who added pistachios to their diet on regular rotation. Studies have shown that a high glycemic index results in higher uric acid levels. In fact, lowering your overall carb intake can increase uric acid levels. The key is to switch out at least some of your refined carbs for whole grains, i.e. start making sandwiches on whole wheat instead of white bread. People with kidney problems usually have high levels of uric acid, a condition known as Hyperuricemia.

Higher Dietary Salt Intakes Reduce Gout Triggers: Study

There is mixed evidence about whether cherries, and foods with high vitamin C can help prevent gout. Eating these foods will not treat gout the way that medicines can. In some cases, they may help improve your condition in some way. Studies have shown that it may be a better choice than meat for people with gout.

Intake of soy foods, including tofu and soy milk, was associated with lower uric acid levels. Data from the EPIC-Oxford cohort showed that vegans had higher levels of serum uric acid compared to meat-eaters, fish eaters, and vegetarians . Researchers hypothesized this was due to vegans’ lower intake of calcium and avoidance of dairy. In this study, there was an inverse relationship with uric acid and intakes of dairy and calcium. Previous studies have found that higher dairy intake was associated with lower uric acid .

Be sure to eat lots of fruits that are rich in vitamin C as it helps the kidneys remove uric acid from your system. These are the questions experienced gout patients and their doctors need to answer. Gout “diets” that are usually recommended involve avoidance of shellfish, organ meats and fatty foods but the best of these diets typically lower the uric acid level by only 1 point. The DASH diet is a little better than that, but most doctors experienced in treating gout attempt to lower the uric acid well below 6. Clearly the DASH diet will not accomplish that in patients with uric acid values of 8 or 10, the levels we typically see in the blood of patients with untreated gout. In addition to avoiding high-purine foods, you should also limit the amount of alcohol—especially beer—you drink.

Avoid Fructose

Allopurinol has a higher risk of severe skin reaction in people with kidney function abnormality, and people with this abnormality are often the ones on febuxostat. After considering all this data, many patients in this situation have chosen to stay on febuxostat, but each person, with their physician, makes this decision. Unlike allopurinol, which interacts with warfarin (Coumadin®), febuxostat did not have this interaction when studied. Febuxostat is approved by the FDA to start at 40mg daily, and if the uric acid has not reached goal (less than 6.0mg/dL) after two weeks of treatment the dose can be increased to 80mg daily.

Can uric acid be cured?

Patients can never be cured of gout. It is a long-term disease that can be controlled by a combination of medication to control the uric acid level, and anti-inflammation drugs to treat a flare-up.

Among people who also used allopurinol, an anti-gout drug, the combination of the drug and cherries lowered the risk of another attack by 75%. This effect persisted even when researchers controlled for risk factors, such as age, sex, alcohol consumption, and use of diuretics or anti-gout medication. Coffee does, however, increase the risk of chronic kidney disease and the likelihood of bone fractures in women, so it is important to discuss the risks and benefits with a doctor. Some foods that are high in purines are otherwise healthful, so the goal should be to reduce the intake of purines rather than to avoid them altogether. In this article, learn about eight natural ways to lower uric acid levels.

Symptoms Of High Uric Acid

If you follow a low-purine diet for gout but still develop gout or gout attacks, talk to your doctor about other treatments, such as medications, you can try to help prevent a future attack. Although these foods can help make a difference in lowering your uric acid levels, you need to check your expectations. Gout can be caused by a combination of factors—not just a poorly balanced diet. Gout is a painful arthritic condition that results when uric acid salts deposit in joints. The most common joint in gout is at the base of the big toe, but it can also affect the joints of the feet, ankles, knees, hands, and wrists.

Other diet patterns that emphasize plant-based foods, including the Mediterranean diet and a traditional Chinese pattern, have been shown to reduce uric acid levels. A 2012 study found that eating twice as much purine resulted in about twice as much risk of recurrent gout attacks while eating ~ 3x as many purines resulted in 5x as much risk. This goes to show that the risk of gout flares amplifies past a certain point. The same study showed lower odds of gout attack incidence with plant purines compared to meat sources. This was true across all levels of consumption, meaning that the highest level of plant purine consumption had similar odds of recurrent attacks to the lowest level of animal purine consumption.