Foods to Avoid with Gout

The diet you follow is one of the biggest causes of gout. When a you are eating a proper healthy and well-balanced diet, your gout will be much more easily managed. You may also want to combine your new healthy eating habits with medication or natural gout remedies to really keep gout out of your life.

by marksdk under CC BY-SA

Choosing to eat healthy foods is one way to achieve control over gout.

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There are certain foods to avoid when you have gout, especially if you are recovering from a recent attack. Understanding these foods to avoid with gout is one of the best things you can do to help ensure freedom for your gout pain.

Gout is caused by high levels of uric acid in the blood. This high uric acid content in the blood causes the uric acid to form into monosodium urate crystals. When these crystals find their way into your joints you will begin to get attacks of gout with severe pain and swelling of the affected area.

As such gout can be seen as a result of chemical imbalance in the body, which can be easily corrected by making changes to your diet.

The direct source of uric acid from food comes from the purines. Purines are a form of protein that actually make up a part of your DNA, and during metabolism any purines that aren’t used to create DNA (or RNA) are degraded into uric acid.

This is where many people start when looking for ways to manage their gout in the long term. There are other approaches, such as an alkaline diet, but the reduced-purine approach is by far and away the most well-known.

Gout: Foods to avoid

The main high purine food groups to avoid are offal, certain seafoods, and red meat. Some vegetables are also high in purines, but their additional health benefits mean that they can be eaten in moderation.

Seafood to avoid with gout includes Scallops, Shrimps, Mackerel, Anchovies, Sardines, Mussels, Fish roe and Herring.

Organ meat such as heart, kidneys, liver, tripe and tongue are very high in purines and rank very highly in any list of foods to avoid with gout. Not a lot of people actually eat these foods, but if you are one of them just be very aware that you could be putting yourself at great risk.

Some vegetables that are high in purines are peas, lentils, cauliflower, mushrooms and dark green leafy vegetables. However if you have reduced the other foods mentioned above, and are generally following a healthy diet, you can probably get away with eating these vegetables. Just bear in mind that if you continue to suffer from gout that you may have to add these vegetables to the list of foods to avoid.

Alcohol, while it does not contain purines itself, is thought to be a factor in gout attacks. It is thought that alcohol causes changes in the metabolism that can lead to high uric acid levels. Some studies indicate that the metabolism of alcohol inhibits the excretion of uric acid from the body. Alcohol should be avoided by anybody suffering from gout, particularly during the gout attack itself.

Side benefits of eating a healthy gout diet

If you take heed of this of foods to avoid, and are otherwise eating a healthy diet, you may also find that you naturally lose weight as a result. Actually, being overweight is considered one of the biggest indicators that someone might get gout. Take note of what you are eating, avoid high purine foods, get your weight under control, and you will have gained a big step forward in your fight against a long-term gout problem.

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