Gout Can Be Minimized With a Specialized Diet

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A person’s diet is key to their life. The things that people eat influence everything about them. Proper nutrition will improve a person’s life and help them feel better. Conversely, when people don’t eat properly, then there’s a negative effect on the body. People feel worse and can develop health conditions.

A common condition that is regularly caused by diet is gout. Gout causes severe pain in certain joints and can prevent people from walking. To counter these issues, people with gout will typically use a specific diet to assist them. In addition to managing gout, a diet designed for it will often assist with weight loss as well.

What is Gout?

Many people have likely heard of gout, but if they have never suffered from it, they don’t actually know what it involves. Gout is actually a special type of arthritis that is caused by crystals in the blood. These form from uric acid when those levels are incredibly high. Gout tends to be caused (or at least has more common attacks) when food with high purine levels are consumed. Therefore a gout diet will obviously avoid these.

While some people may get gout in the fingers or hands, most people suffer gout in the feet. Specifically, it will attack people in their joints. The most common joint is the joint between the big toe and foot. What happens is often an incredibly painful swelling on the joint.

Foods to Avoid

As mentioned, most of the foods that are avoided in a gout diet are high in purines. There are some others as well that are a bad idea. Here are some foods to avoid:

• Alcohol - Typically wine is exempted from this list as long as it is drank in moderation. However alcohol has been known to increase the severity of gout attacks and make them last longer.
• Red Meat - Large amounts of red meats are avoided from those with gout. Typically leaner meats like poultry are preferred.
• Seafood - This food is tricky. Several are quite high in purines. This includes sardines and shellfish. However, seafood is very nutritious overall. Moderation is key.
• Excess Sugar - Sugar is added to a lot of food these days. Cereals are one of the worst as they are loaded with added sugars. Even things like fruit juice should be avoided due to the huge amount of natural sugar they have.
• Organ Meats - Items like liver or kidney meat have huge purine levels.

Foods to Help Manage Gout

There are goals that can come from a gout diet. A proper gout diet will assist with weight loss and help a person stay well hydrated. Typically it will also be high in protein and natural complex carbohydrates. Instead, it will avoid fatty and processed Foods. Here are a number of the foods that a gout diet will include and why:

• Salmon - Salmon is high in protein and low in fat. It’s not the only fish that works with a gout diet. It should still be consumed in moderation, as mentioned early in regards to seafood.
• Cherries - In addition to being absolutely delicious, cherries have shown some good results in testing for reducing gout attacks.
• Citrus Fruit - It’s shown that vitamin C typically has an excellent effect on gout. Many people may choose supplements, but fruit works too.
• Chicken Breast - It may be boring, but it’s healthy protein.
• Vegetables - There are some vegetables high in purines, however studies have shown that these have had very little in the way of increasing gout issues. Therefore spinach and asparagus are actually fine.