Gout Foods – The Best Approach
Most people approach gout foods by looking for bad foods to avoid, or good foods to make better choices.
That is entirely the wrong approach.
Here’s why, with ideas for a better approach to gout foods.
One of the worst aspects of dealing with gout is the incredible amount of bad information. Top of the list is the belief that gout is caused by bad eating habits. This leads to the belief that all you need do to fix gout is to seek out good foods, and avoid bad.
But it is nonsense to try to do this. Humans have incredibly complex digestive systems and incredibly sophisticated nutrition processing systems. Your body takes all that you eat and drink, and processes it the best it can to provide the energy you need for your everyday activities, and the nutrients you need to maintain a healthy body.
No Good Gout Foods
Gout sufferers are often told that some foods, e.g. dairy products, are good for gout, and they are inundated with claims from marketing departments eager to sell the latest superfood. But simply adding food items to your existing diet will increase your weight which increases your risks of a gout attack. If you attempt to overcome this by dropping some other foods, how do you know that what you are adding to your diet is better than the foods you are dropping?
You cannot assess individual food items in isolation – you must measure and control your total diet. In this article, when I refer to foods, I include all food, drink, and food supplements – i.e. anything you eat and drink except for prescription medicines.
No Bad Gout Foods
There is good evidence to show that high purine foods can increase uric acid. So does this mean that all you need to do is avoid purines, and your gout will disappear?
Absolutely not.
If you stop eating all purines, not only will you have a very bland diet that is very hard to stick with, you will also ignore the fact that most purines are produced by your own body as part of natural cell metabolism. You are also ignoring other foods that may have just as much affect on gout as purines. Excess iron is strongly associated with gout as are excess calories. Both of these encourage our bodies to produce more uric acid, as do other bad eating practices such as fasting, essential nutrient shortage, or bad balance of nutrients.
Another common food avoidance problem relates to so-called gout triggers. Many gout sufferers associate certain foods with gout attacks, and become obsessed with avoiding them. But this ignores the fact that you can still have gout attacks when you are actually helping your gout. It is a well known effect of lowering uric acid, that gout flares can occur when old uric acid crystals start to dissolve. That is why pain relief is usually prescribed alongside uric acid lowering pills for a few months until the majority of old crystals have been dissolved. This can apply equally for gout foods. Many gout sufferers avoid tomatoes, which they claim always trigger gout attacks. But evidence suggests that tomatoes can lower uric acid, so perhaps the gout flares are a positive outcome of reduced uric acid?
You should not ban foods on the basis of hearsay or gout pain. If you are committed to improving your gout diet as a way of controlling gout, you must make a matching commitment to make sure that you test uric acid levels to properly assess the effects of changing gout foods.
The Right Approach To Gout Foods
Simply put, there are no good gout foods, and no bad gout foods – there are just foods that are right for you.
Your first step is to ensure that you get a proper gout diagnosis. I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who worry about their intake of certain foods, when they are not even sure if they have gout. You must be diagnosed properly, and you must know your uric acid number (the exact level of uric acid in your blood – NOT a meaningless high/normal/low assessment).
Your second step is to develop a treatment plan. Together with your doctor, decide on your approach to managing gout pain, and your approach to lowering uric acid. Have a clear idea of your target uric acid level. Decide whether you can expect good results with diet alone, or if you need a combination of diet management with some medical assistance.
Your third step is to assess your diet with respect to your gout treatment plan. If you are seeking to lower uric acid (and if not, why not?), see where you can drop some foods that increase uric acid and add foods that decrease them
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