Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Ever Wonder What Gout Really Is?

By Paul Mahon

Your diet could well be causing you pain, if you eat foods such as liver, anchovies and dried beans they could be contributing to your gout. Gout is the pain you feel in your joints, especially your big toe joint. It is a form of arthritis but you can do a lot to prevent gout attacks by controlling what you eat.

Your body can deal with almost everything that you throw at it, but if you have any sort of kidney disease or problem then your body will have problems dealing with uric acid. The uric acid that can't be filtered and expelled in your urine will turn into crystals and these crystals congregate in your joints and cause gout pain.

No one ever thinks about their kidneys until they start to malfunction in some way, one of the functions that your kidneys perform is to clean uric acid from your system and send it out of your body in your urine. When your kidneys stop filtering and removing uric acid you are in with a good chance of developing gout.

Hyperuricemia is the word that you need to listen for, if your Dr mentions that then you know you have elevated levels of uric acid in your body and are at an increased risk of gout. No need to panic instantly though as you are not certain to develop gout, you can change your diet and alcohol intake and get the levels of uric acid in your blood back down to safe levels.

Men usually eat more red meat than the women in their lives and that is part of the reason why the incidences of gout are much higher in men than they are in women. If a man has a relative who has gout then he should take extra precautions as family history is another contributing factor.

You may notice that your big toe feels really hot at first and then the toe may look swollen and red. Then when you are in bed that night you will be woken up with an excrutiating pain in your big toe, it will usually hurt just to have the bed sheet touching your toe. Gout attacks are painful and yet it is all caused by tiny uric acid crystals.

The only good thing about gout is that you can control it relatively easily, you are in charge of what you eat and drink so you can control how much puric acid enters your body. The less purine rich food and drink you take in the less there is for your kidneys to deal with and that means they will be less likely to leave enough in your body to create uric acid crystals and give you an attack of gout.

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