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Gout is an extremely painful condition that millions of people suffer from each year, causing untold amounts of suffering and misery. Fortunately, it's also something that can be treated by eating a proper gout diet.
After a gout diagnosis, most doctors will recommend medication, the most common gout treatment, but this is not the most effective way to handle your gout symptoms long term.
One of the primary gout causes is a diet that is too high in purine. Now, you're probably wondering what purine is, or protesting that you don't eat dog food. Purine is an amino acid, one of the basic building blocks of protein.
When you digest purine, your body breaks it down into uric acid. When your body can't get rid of the uric acid, it builds up in the joints and causes the pain and swelling we associate with gout.
As you might imagine, an effective method of gout treatment is to reduce the amount of purine-rich foods you eat, which is the basis of a good gout diet. This is also one of the traditional gout remedies from before the disease was fully understood, and it's one of those areas where the folk wisdom happened to be completely right.
If you're going to pursue gout treatment without resorting to drugs, or as a supplement to them you're going to want to avoid certain foods. A good gout diet menu won't include a lot of:
1. Seafood
Generally speaking, seafood is regarded as being good for you, and for the most part that's true. Unfortunately, if you have a gout diagnosis, you're going to have to severely restrict your intake. On a gout diet, seafood needs to be an occasional treat. Anything more will interfere with gout treatment.
2. Organ Meats
This is probably less of an issue on a gout diet than seafood, simply because most people don't eat a lot of organ meats these days. That said, kidneys, liver, and the like are all high purine foods, and eating them will make gout treatment more difficult.
3. Red Meat
A gout diet, which is essentially a low purine diet, can't have a lot of red meat in it. If you suffer from gout, you need to try and limit your red meat intake to a few ounces a day if you want to see real results.
4. Fructose
One of the latest discoveries in gout treatment is that fructose can contribute to flare-ups. Fructose is a sugar found in fruits, but the fruits aren't really the problem on a gout diet, since the amount of sugar in real fruit is usually pretty minimal.
What does interfere with gout treatment is high fructose corn syrup, which is in nearly everything. You definitely need to drop sodas, but if you're on a gout diet you should also start checking labels and avoid anything with high fructose corn syrup in it.
5. Alcohol
Strictly speaking, alcohol doesn't have anything to do with purine, but it does affect the levels of uric acid in your blood. It slows down the metabolism of the acid and causes you to become dehydrated, both of which will interfere with gout treatment. If you decide to get on a gout diet plan, limiting alcohol needs to be a top priority.