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.
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