Gout Can Be Minimized With a Specialized Diet

A person’s diet is key to their life. The things people eat affect everything about them. Proper nutrition will improve a person’s life and help them feel better. Conversely, when people don’t eat properly, it has a negative impact on the body. People feel worse and can develop health problems.

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 counteract these problems, people with gout usually use a special diet to help them. In addition to treating gout, a balanced diet often helps with weight loss as well.

Gout Can Be Minimized With a Specialized Diet

What is gout?

Many people have probably heard of gout, but if they’ve never had it, they don’t really know what it is. Gout is actually a special type of arthritis caused by crystals in the blood. These form from uric acid when these levels are incredibly high. Gout tends to be caused (or at least has more frequent attacks) when foods high in purines are consumed. Therefore, a gout diet will obviously avoid these.

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

to avoid foods

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

  • Alcohol – Typically wine is exempt from this list as long as it is drunk in moderation. However, alcohol is known to increase the severity of gout attacks and make them last longer.
  • Red Meat – Large amounts of red meat are avoided by people with gout. Typically, leaner meats such as poultry are preferred.
  • Seafood – This meal is tricky. Some are quite high in purines. These include sardines and shellfish. However, seafood is very nutritious overall. Moderation is the key.
  • Excess sugar – Sugar is added to many foods these days. Cereals are one of the worst as they are loaded with added sugars. Even things like fruit juices should be avoided due to the massive amount of natural sugars they contain.
  • Offals – Items like liver or kidney meat have high levels of purines.

Foods to treat gout

There are goals that can come from a gout diet. A proper gout diet aids in weight loss and helps a person stay well hydrated. It is also typically high in protein and natural complex carbohydrates. Instead, fatty and processed foods are avoided. Here are a number of 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 on a gout diet. It should still be consumed in moderation, as mentioned earlier in relation to seafood.
  • Cherries – Aside from being absolutely delicious, cherries have shown some good results in gout flare reduction tests.
  • Citrus Fruits – Vitamin C has typically been shown to have an excellent effect on gout. Many people choose supplements, but fruit works, too.
  • Chicken Breast – It may be boring, but it’s healthy protein.
  • Vegetables – There are some vegetables that are high in purines, but studies have shown that these have contributed very little to the increase in gout problems. So spinach and asparagus are actually fine.

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