Gout Risk Factors: Who Is At Risk of Gout?

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Are you at risk of gout? Here, I’ve listed key gout risk factors so that you can see how much you may be at risk…

Hyperuricea — the condition where there are high uric acid levels in the body — is a leading cause of gout. Around 70% of people who suffer from gout produce too much uric acid, whilst about 30% can’t eliminate it from their systems effectively enough.

So what are the things that can give rise to high uric acid in people?

Lifestyle Issues

1. Your Diet

Foods contain compounds called ‘purines’ that, when they breakdown during your normal metabolizing process, produce uric acid. And some foods are higher in purines than others. If your diet is high in purines (as western diets tend to be) then your uric acid levels can be elevated.

2. Too Much Alcohol

Alcohol — beer in particular — is known to produce hyperuricemia because of it’s ability to hamper the normal removal of uric acid from the body. It is believed that, on average, 2 drinks per day for men and 1 drink a day for women, can lead to hyperuricemia.

3. Being Overweight

Someone who is overweight has a higher risk of hyperuricemia, simply because there is more tissue to be broken down. The human body also contains purines, so that when these breakdown uric acid is produced, therefore the more tissue to breakdown, the more uric acid produced. The risk exists if you are 30 pounds or more above your model weight.

Other gout risk factors are…

Family History

There is research that suggests that 1 out of 4 gout sufferers has a family history of gout. So, if you have a family history of gout — or arthritis because gout accounts for around 5% of arthritis cases — then you have a higher risk of gout than someone who hasn’t such a history.

Medical Conditions / Medications

Some medical conditions can help to increase your gout risk. These are conditions such as; diabetes, high cholesterol, narrowing of the arteries, high blood pressure, and chemotherapy which can release a lot of uric acid into the bloodstream.

And some medications can also increase your gout risk, e.g. medications for high blood pressure, diuretics, niacin (vitamin), cyclosporine (immuno-suppressant), levodopa (for Parkinson’s disease), meds that use salicylic acid (e.g. aspirin), and so on.

Age and Sex

Gout affects men more than women, because men usually have higher uric acid levels in their bodies compared to women anyway. On average, men seem to get gout between the ages of 30 and 50.

Women don’t usually start getting gout until they are over 50. It is believed that this happens because a woman’s uric acid levels naturally rise after the menopause.

Relatively very few gout cases have been diagnosed in children and young adults. 

By knowing and understanding the risk factors leading to gout, you are now better able to help yourself prevent gout attacks in the future. Please now look around this website for more information on symptoms, causes and treatment options.

Related Posts:

• Causes of Gout in Men – Are You at Risk?

Gout Causes and Prevention

When considering how to tackle gout, apart from the pressing need for fast gout pain relief, there is a critical issue that you need to address. This  is to prevent gout attacks from happening again. This is very important because frequently recurring gout can lead to permanently damaged joints and even kidney problems, such as very painful kidney stones.

But we need to first understand what causes gout so that we can address this issue more effectively…

Gout Causes

The symptoms of gout that you perhaps are experiencing right now; the redness, stiffness, swelling, inflammation and agonizing pain, are caused by uric acid crystals that have formed in your joint(s) and surrounding tissue.

Generally speaking, the crystals form when there are high levels of uric acid in your bloodstream. And I say ‘generally’ because some folks can have high levels and not have gout, while others can have relatively low levels and get gout.

The key is probably the word ‘relative’. What might be considered ‘high’ for one person might not for another, and so on. The way to look at this, I think, is to compare what would be your ‘normal’ healthy uric acid levels against what they are when you have an attack. They will be higher than your ‘normal’ levels.

But here’s the thing; uric acid is actually an output of the breakdown of natural chemical compounds in our body’s cells and in our foods. These provide us with, among other things, our protein and our energy requirements. In doing so they break down and uric acid is produced as a byproduct. 

The uric acid thus produced is processed by your kidneys and excess flushed out of your body via your urine, a little through stools. In this way healthy amounts of uric acid circulates in your bloodstream, where they act as beneficial antioxidants.

But sometimes for varying reasons, your kidneys can’t cope and excess uric acid is retained in your body at higher-than-normal levels for you. For a gout sufferer, it’s this that then forms crystals and results in a gout attack.

Gout Prevention

Most gout sufferers are prescribed drug-based medications for both gout symptom relief, and, to lower uric acid in order to prevent recurring gout. You can get more on medications here.

But, increasingly, gout sufferers are utilizing natural remedies for gout instead of drugs with their nasty side effects like nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, bleeding, ulcers, skin allergies, etc.

For natural gout prevention, you need to take into account several things like your weight position, your lifestyle choices, family history, and so on.

But one of the most important is your diet. Remember above how purines produce uric acid, and, as a gout sufferer, you need to reduce your uric acid in order to prevent gout attacks? 

Well, you also saw that purines exist in our food. And different foods have different purine concentrations. So, as a gout sufferer, you need to change to a low purine diet and eliminate those foods that are high in purines. Broadly, these are fatty red meat, organ meat, seafood, poultry and legumes.

And remember that preventing recurring gout is very important in order to prevent possible permanent damage. Your diet can help you do this. You can get more details on a diet for gout prevention here.

Related Posts:

• Causes of Gout in Men – Are You at Risk?
• What is Gout? A Simple Guide to What Gout Is
• Gout Symptoms, Causes & Natural Treatment