Health & Medical Rheumatoid Arthritis

Gout - How to Prevent Gout and Painful Recurring Attack

What is gout? Gout, also known as metabolic rheumatism, is a result of abnormal accumulated uric acid in body that forms crystals.
Men are more prone to get gout than women; this is because female hormone can encourage discharge of uric acid from body.
Chance for women to develop gout is only 2% of men.
Most of the male gout patients are more than 40 years old; while, women tend to develop gout after menopause.
Once a person develops gout, this disease will be with him or her for the rest of life.
If it is left untreated, it will bring other complications such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and kidney failure.
Thus, knowledge and prevention on gout is very important.
Most of the gout patients start to feel the pain at toe area, which the skin turns reddish and glossy as of inflammation.
The pain will be very serious as even the mild wind will exaggerate the pain.
How to prevent gout and painful recurring attack? Avoid obesity According to research done, uric acid level will raise proportionally with surface area of body.
Thus, the very first step to prevent gout is to avoid becoming obese.
Ideally, try to stay within 10% of the preferred BMI range.
Cutting down calorie, avoiding heavy alcohol intake and overeating, and cutting down saturated fat are some basic ways to stay slim.
Make it a habit to fully chew the food as eating too fast, without proper chewing, tends to promote overeating and deposition of fat.
Avoid food with high purine content Uric acid is a side product of disintegration of purine in body.
Animals organs (liver, kidney), anchovies, dried mushrooms, sardines, soybeans, seasoned foods contain high purine content (about 100 to 1000 milligram of purine content in every 100 gram of food).
In fact, try substitute food with no or low purine content such as milk, yam, bread, rice, corn, egg, cheese, seaweed, fruit, and vegetable.
Control alcohol intake Alcohol will increase formation of uric acid and curb kidney to pass it out.
In fact, most of the recurring attack happens on the next day morning after a night out drinking session.
Beer has the highest purine content among all other alcohol drinks and it will cause uric acid, cholesterol, neutral fat or triglyceride to go up.
Drink more water Drinking more water helps to dilute the uric acid giving kidney more opportunity to pass it out from body, which helps in preventing kidney stone formation.
A normal healthy person needs 1 to 2 liters of water; while, a gout patient needs at least 2 liters a day.
Do frequent light exercise Intense exercise will increase uric acid level in body as it is side product of overworked muscles.
Blood becomes more viscous as more water is lost from perspiration; thus, the chance for uric acid to form crystal is higher after intense exercise.
Some examples of light exercise include walking, biking, jogging, swimming, golfing, and bowling.
A 30 minutes slow jog can burn off 160 calories; thus do more light exercise and stay relaxed.


Leave a reply