Gout! This unfortunate condition has been around for centuries. At one point, it was considered to be a disease of the rich, because back in those days it was only the rich who could afford to purchase sugary, decadent foods and alcohol.
It was first thought that if you don’t want gout or gout flare ups, you will need to eat a low fat and low purine diet. You are also typically told to avoid red meat and seafood because they are rich in purines and too much purine would lead to gout and gout flare ups, this is not the case. The problem with this assumption is that our bodies already make a lot of purines. This is done anytime a cell breaks down ATP or GTP for energy, purine is created.
Also, anytime you break down DNA or RNA you create purine, the problem is that your body makes five to ten times as many purines from the breakdown of energy from RNA and DNA than you could ever eat. So eating a low or high purine diet is called into question.
Uric acid, a waste product of purine, is increased when we have too much purine in the blood, but research has been done with people that have high levels of uric acid in their blood, but they don’t have gout or gout flare ups. So if high levels of uric acid causes gout, how come these people don’t have gout?
We are also told that when uric acid crystals get into your joints, you will have a gout attack. The problem with this is that if you drew synovial fluid from a normal joint, there will be uric acid crystals, but these people do not have any inflammation and they don’t have gout attacks. Also your body uses uric acid as an antioxidant and has many other uses for uric acid. For example, we know that uric acid is excreted into the kidneys, but did you know that in the proximal tubing of the kidney, your body actually re-absorbs over fifty percent of the uric acid that was initially put into your urine. So if uric acid was so bad, would our kidneys re-absorb it? No, they would not.
Let’s talk about some lies we have been told that will prevent gout attacks or gout flare ups.
The first is the low purine diet. Research shows that lots of people who eat a high purine diet do not have gout, but some people that eat a low purine diet do get gout.
The next lie is that you should eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and drink lots of fruit and vegetable juices, there is no research for any of this, and this is actually very bad advice.
The next lie is that the reason you have gout is because your blood is too acidic or that you need to eat low fat. The truth is, eating fat of any kind has nothing to do with uric acid levels or joint inflammation.
So let’s talk about what actually causes gout. One of the main reasons for gout is inflammation, gout is inflammatory in nature. Another reason for gout is fructose; research shows that drinking a lot of fruit juices and soft drinks, or anything that has high fructose corn syrup is a bad idea. The next cause of gout is having high insulin levels in your blood, so if you are constantly eating too high of a carbohydrate diet on a daily basis, you have an increased risk of having gout. Another cause of gout is your alcohol consumption; beer is the worst, followed by wine and spirits. The thing next you are told is not to have coffee because it causes acidity in your blood, this is absolutely wrong, in fact the research shows the more coffee you have without sugar, the less your risk of having gout. Here are ten steps you can follow to not have gout, or a gout flare up.
- Quit all alcohol
- Get your weight under control
- Decrease inflammations-no seed oils
- Decrease fructose consumption- no fruit juices or vegetable juices.
- No sugar or grains, and no rice or oats
- Keep insulin level low by consuming a low carbohydrate diet.
- Get plenty of magnesium and potassium.
- Make as many ketones as possible.
- Consume a keto or a carnivore diet.
- Have your coffee sugar free.
Follow these steps and you can live a life free of gout and gout flare ups. Embarking on a low carbohydrate diet will not only protect you against gout but it will keep your weight down and your insulin level low as well.
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