The Ideal Gout Diet

What Is The Ideal Gout Diet?

There seems to be a lot of confusion and myths regarding the ideal gout diet on the net/media and among doctors, health professionals, and dietitians. Therefore, we’re gonna try and set the record straight. You’re about to learn what you should be eating if you want to lower uric acid levels avoiding painful gout attacks.

Regardless, many people will disagree with me about which foods to eat and which to avoid or limit. Finally, you must do your own homework. Don’t just take my word for it or anybody else’s for that matter. After all, your health is what’s at stake.

If you believe in the natural ability of your body being able to heal, then read on. Do not expect good health to come to you in the form of capsules! Remember that kidney function decreases due to the fact that prescribed drugs may cause up to 20% of kidney failures! Prescription pills don’t cure anything, they just treat the symptoms!

There are a ton of fad diets that have come and passed like the Atkins diet, South Beach diet, the cookie diet, Jenny Craig diet, Paleo diet, and many others. But why can’t there be just one healthy, fully optimized way to eat, in order to live a healthy life? Our body is a masterpiece creation with excess capacity.

The human brain contains about 10 billion nerve cells or neurons, each capable of storing 40 billion memories. We lose a few couple hundred daily depending on how we abuse our brain from food and drink.

Our body also has two kidneys, and we can live with only one of them functioning if we have to. We also have two lungs which enable us to breathe in oxygen which is very important for metabolism.

Our body provides great excess capacity to all of our vital organs. Nevertheless, we abuse them so badly that sometimes we wear them out in only 30 to 60 years!!!

7 Gout Diet Myths Revealed

Gout has a lot of diet myths. Gout was previously known as the “Kings’ Disease” because it was associated with the wealthy’s lavish diets. But if you’ve ever experienced gout, you know it’s anything but royal.

The truth, on the other hand, is far more complicated. Gout affects up to 4% of American people each year, and rising obesity rates increase our risk. When it comes to nutrition and gout, though, don’t believe everything you hear. Diet is important, but not always in the manner you may imagine.

Let’s take a deeper look at some of the most frequent gout diet fallacies.

1. Should I abstain from all rich foods?
   Patients with gout frequently question if rich foods, such as dishes with thick sauces, should be avoided. It is a common misconception that these foods cause gout. After all, these foods aren’t exactly harbingers of a healthier way of life. However, when desserts and other rich foods are consumed in moderation, they should not have an impact on your gout flare ups.
2. Keep in mind that moderation is the key word here. Rich foods may not directly cause flare-ups, but they can cause weight gain. Obesity is also a significant risk factor for gout attacks.
3. The idea that persons with gout should avoid dairy spread at some point. However, certain dairy products, particularly milk, can aid in the removal of uric acid from the body.
4. Is there a problem with high fructose corn syrup?
   Because it boosts uric acid levels in your body, high-fructose corn syrup has been linked to gout flare-ups. It’s also found in a lot more processed and pre-packaged meals than you might imagine.
5. Always examine the nutrition labels when you go supermarket shopping. If corn syrup is listed as an ingredient in a product, avoid purchasing it.
6. Is it true that acidic foods cause high uric acid levels?
   Foods that are acidic, such as tomatoes, citrus and other fruits, beans, and dairy products, do not always result in elevated uric acid levels. Because of the word “acid,” many people assume they do, although acidic foods and uric acid are not the same thing.
7. Should my meat-eating days be over as a gout patient?
   You may have noticed a recurring trend here: moderation is essential for a successful gout diet. Organ meats (I’m looking at you, liver) are high in purines and are therefore likely to cause gout flare-ups. If you enjoy eating organ meat, move on and stay strong; it’s not worth it!
8. Moderate consumption of lean meats like chicken and turkey should have no negative impact on your health. Shrimp and lobster, for example, are high in purines, so don’t eat them on a frequent basis.
9. The consumption of dairy products raises the risk of gout:
   It’s a common myth that gout sufferers should avoid dairy products like milk and yogurt. Low-fat dairy consumption, on the other hand, has been demonstrated in studies to have a moderate urate-lowering effect and is linked to a lower risk of the disease.
10. Does having gout mean I have to be alcohol-free?
    Yes, abstaining from alcohol is an excellent idea. Because uric acid levels are increased by alcohol molecules in your body, drinking can drive you over the brink and into a flare-up.
11. If you’ve recently been diagnosed and are starting treatment, try cutting out alcohol first. As your uric acid levels decrease, your doctor may allow you to gradually add a tiny quantity back into your diet.
12. Even then, doctors advise avoiding beer and liquor in favor of safer alternatives such as red wine.
13. Vegetables:
    As you’ve obviously realized, creating an efficient gout diet requires contextualization. Vegetables, for example, are a well-known part of any healthy diet. However, did you know that purines are abundant in vegetables like asparagus, spinach, cauliflower, peas, and mushrooms?
14. High-purine veggies, on the other hand, do not appear to aggravate gout as much as high-purine animal-based diets do. Experts believe that as long as it comes from a vegetable source, it is safe to eat.
15. Another thing to keep in mind when balancing foods and gout: Purines are abundant in several dried beans, particularly fava and garbanzo, therefore you may need to avoid them.
16. Eating soy isn’t as bad as they make it out to be:
    Purines are found in moderate amounts in soy foods such as tofu, soy milk, and edamame. For people with gout, doctors have traditionally advised against eating too much soy.
17. According to one study, soybeans, soymilk, and soy powder significantly increased uric acid levels in the blood. Larger population studies, on the other hand, have recently revealed a different story.
18. Several studies have found that not only are soy products safe for gout patients, but that people who eat more soy have a lower risk of developing gout.

The bottom line on gout dieting myths

Apart from the misconceptions, the greatest recommendation for gout sufferers is to eat fresh, unadulterated foods. Choose complex carbohydrates (such as those found in fruits) over refined carbohydrates found in packaged or processed foods.

Dehydration is a risk factor for an acute attack, so always drink enough water.

Gout and Meat

I’m gonna ask you also to use your common sense since in today’s diet. In comparison to over 100 years ago, the rates of cancer, gout, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, osteoarthritis, and other disorders are extremely high.

This is particularly intriguing when you consider that most people’s diets are composed primarily of carbs. These are foods that pass through the digestive system without being digested.

Meat intake used to be lower, but today it appears to be on a daily basis. Some people eat it at all three meals of the day. Meat fat and blood concentrate, which the body cannot handle in large amounts.

We make so many waste products while digesting meat that our kidneys can’t keep up with them. This can make you more susceptible to disorders like gout. The issue is that we consume far too much fat in North America, roughly 40% to 50%. This must change if we are to reduce the risk of diseases.

I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t eat meat, but if you do, make sure it’s clean and fat-free. You should choose meat that is essentially lean and cooked over an open fire or on a grill, where any fat is burned off. My advice to you is to eat red meat not more than twice a week if you suffer from gout.

Beef, lamb, goat, rabbit, and deer are good meats to eat. These types of meat generally have 70% to 75% of its calories as fat. Don’t get me wrong, you need the protein of meat in order to rebuild muscle. However, you don’t need to eat that much of it.

Doug Paddon-Jones, an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, conducted research on meat consumption by Iron-man triathlon competitors. They concluded that 4 ounces of beef per day were sufficient to restore the muscles that athletes wore out during exercise.

The need for more protein is exaggerated particularly in advertisements and many athletes believe that more protein is better. When we eat too much protein, our metabolism produces ammonia, urea, and other waste products. That takes seven to eight times more water to flush out through the kidneys than carbohydrates.

Pork should be avoided at all costs since the animal is a scavenger and its’ role in nature is to eat garbage. Therefore, you should limit bacon, ham, sausages, pork chops which can wreak havoc to your health.

You should consider fish as your best source of protein now that you know it’s a good idea to restrict your intake of red meat. After all, it’s low in fat and high in Omega 3 oils, which help raise HDL (good cholesterol) and lower LDL (bad cholesterol) (bad cholesterol).

Omega-3 fatty acids are thought to be beneficial for people suffering from gout as well as other inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. This is due to the fact that they block substances that would otherwise cause inflammation in the body.

The presence of purines in fish is well recognized, however, the amount is only moderate. Furthermore, you need fish in your diet, therefore eating it 2–3 times each week is a smart suggestion. Only if you have severe gout and a high uric acid level should you eliminate it from your diet.

You can eat chicken, preferably chicken breast which has 15% of its calories as fat. Do not touch organ meat whatsoever as they contain the highest levels of purines. Therefore, they should be avoided. Besides, they are very unhealthy for you.

Today’s animal meat is full of toxic chemicals from air and ground pollution. These include growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, nuclear wastes, high levels of adrenaline, and who knows what else.

All these compounds are considered carcinogenic or cancer-causing. We find more cancer in cows, pigs, and chickens today than ever before. So, your kidneys need to work overtime to process all this garbage.

Many farmers are grinding up sick and dying cows, pigs, and chickens. Then they mix this “dead” and frequently “diseased” meat into their regular animal feeds. As a result, diseases such as “mad cow” and “hoof and mouth” occur.

We see this now, especially in Europe where they have been feeding dead sheep meat to living cows. Cows are vegetarians by nature eating only herbs, what insanity!

Foods that trigger gout attacks

The majority of patients have their own list of foods that cause them to have an attack. Knowing which foods are most likely to cause gout and which can help lower your risk will allow you to make informed decisions. Here are the ones you should be aware of:

● Beer and alcohol in general:
Because all alcohol reduces the blood’s pH level, or acid-alkaline balance, it is worse than most foods. This may speed up the crystallization of uric acid.

More than two drinks per day, according to some specialists, is likely to trigger a gout attack. Furthermore, alcohol dehydrates the body, limiting uric acid excretion and increasing the risk of kidney stones, which are more common in people with gout.

If you do drink, stick to wine, as previously stated. Because beer yeast is heavy in purines, it is far more prone to produce gout attacks.

● Organ meats (not to be confused with organic meats!):
Meats, particularly red meats, can be consumed in moderation. When it comes to organ meats, however, we can’t stress enough how important it is to avoid them at all costs. To put it another way, if you have gout, eating organs attracts gout attacks like a powerful magnet.

Foods like liver pâté and calves’ sweetbreads are considered delicacies by some. However, because they’re high in purines, they’re poor news for gout sufferers.

While there is little research on women, men who ate the most purine-rich meats had a 40% higher risk of gout than those who ate the least. This was a study according to a 12-year study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University.

● Shellfish:
As we continue our quest to eliminate gout-causing foods from your diet, we come across one of our most formidable foes: shellfish.

There does not appear to be any circumstance in which eating shellfish, even in moderation, would be considered safe for gout sufferers.

It’s best to avoid high-purine foods like shrimp, lobster, and scallops. According to the same Harvard study, men who ate the most seafood were 50% more likely to develop gout than those who ate the least.

● Fish rich in fat:
According to some studies, fish eaters have a 33% lower risk of gout flares. However, because some fish contain high levels of purines, it is critical to understand which types of seafood are best for gout.

Purines are found in different amounts in different types of seafood. Anchovies, codfish, haddock, herring, mackerel, mussels, roe (fish eggs), sardines, scallops, and trout are the worst foods for people with gout. Salmon appears to be an exception and a healthier seafood choice for gout sufferers.

● Sugary drinks and soda:
Women who drank one serving of sweetened soft drinks per day had a 74% higher risk of gout than those who drank less than one serving per month. That’s according to findings from a 2010 analysis of the 79,000-person Nurses’ Health Study. Surprisingly, diet soda did not increase the risk of gout.

Gout pain is also increased by fruit juice and high-fructose fruits like apples and pears. Fruit provides numerous health benefits, but choose low-fructose varieties such berries and stone fruits such as apricots and nectarines.

Carbohydrates and the Ideal Gout Diet

What are carbohydrates after all? Too many people have confused it with calories. For example, they say potatoes don’t have as many calories as an apple. I say, with food that is grown from the earth, you can eat as much as you desire because it’s good for you. Carbohydrates are pure energy!

Fruits only have 3% of their calories as fat, vegetables about 5%, grains about 5%, rice 4%, and oatmeal 15%! Carbohydrates are also beneficial to your stool and help it move more quickly through your bowel. In fact, they can reduce the time it takes to transit the bowel from approximately 90 hours to approximately 33 hours.

Your kidneys take less of a beating when processing carbs compared to meats, that’s for sure!

So Spiro, what are you trying to say? The “Ideal Gout Diet” is what I recommend as an optimized gout diet. This includes eating clean carbohydrates for 80 percent of your daily calories. 10% of your calories should come from fat, and the remaining 10% should come from protein.

The problem is the Western diet consists of malnutrition. Eating too much fat and sugar, neither of which has any nutrients in them. However, they do have many empty calories and they don’t help your immune system by preventing diseases like gout.

As for sugar, I’m not going to go into it in this post since it was well covered in a previous post titled: “Sugar, Fructose, High Fructose Corn Syrup and Gout”. I strongly recommend you read it!

You’ll get all the information regarding sugar in your diet in that post. When I have a sweet tooth, honey is my preferred choice. It has only 15 calories per teaspoon and has a ton of nutrients in it. You can also eat sliced bananas, pitted prunes, and raisins.

It takes more water to separate the waste products from the protein (meats). However, your principal food should be carbs. This includes veggies, fruits, grains, whole-grain bread, beans, corn, whole-wheat pasta, and rice. Anything you can grow in your garden is good for you and you can eat all that you want from it.

Stop listening to the mainstream media and what this expert and that expert said on TV. Use your common sense and feel great! We have learned from athletes that we can increase our endurance by 3 times just by adding a carbohydrate diet through our exercise regime.

The liver and muscles, as we begin to exercise, begin to store carbs in the form of glycogen (glucose). For immediate energy, as we store this carb, it then gives you energy and you feel good.

10 Steps to an Optimized Gout Diet

1. Limit meat, poultry, fish, and nuts to 10% of your daily protein calories. Remember to strictly avoid seafood, you can read more about it here.
2. Limit your cheese, milk, butter, eggs, yogurt, basically your fat intake to 10% of your daily fat calories. Saturated fat may lower the body’s ability to eliminate uric acid and prevent obesity which is linked to gout.
3. Limit sugar to 25 mg a day and avoid foods sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.
4. Drink plenty of water.
5. Limit your alcohol intake.
6. Also limit animal-based foods such as gravy, bouillon chicken soup, even Jello.
7. Choose 80% of your daily calories as complex carbohydrates in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, whole-wheat pasta, and rice. Avoid simple or refined carbohydrates like white bread, cakes, and candy. Essentially, a low purine diet is very important for the gout sufferer, the highest purine foods are obviously meats.
8. Avoid eating fried and processed foods. Not only will it increase your uric acid levels but it will also increase the free radicals which may cause other diseases too.
9. Remember to eat everything fresh and organic, preferably locally grown in your community.
10. Substitute olive oil for other oils in your cooking, baking, and salad dressings. Add it over pasta or a baked potato because it is the only exception to fats and it may help control your uric acid.
11. When heated, it loses its beneficial properties and releases free radicals, which can lead to diseases like cancer. This oil decreases blood pressure and cholesterol levels while increasing HDL (good cholesterol).
12. It works in the opposite direction of other oils, lowering blood sugar levels, making it ideal for diabetics.
13. It may also assist to avoid heart disease and possibly gout. Make sure it’s extra virgin olive oil that’s been cold-pressed.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not asking you to become a strict vegetarian. God knows I ain’t one! Although it might seem hard at first to follow a diet that consists of eating less meat (protein) and fat (dairy, eggs, etc…), you will notice once you get acquainted with your new diet that your energy levels will rise and you will definitely feel better, that I promise.

I’ve noticed when I am disciplined and follow this diet, I get no flare-ups or attacks. In addition my joints also feel stronger since there’s less inflammation. But, yes, I am human, and I occasionally stray from my well-planned diet, which is what gets me into problems.

As a result, think of discipline as the most crucial aspect of your diet. I know it’s not easy, but you have to give it a shot! It’s either that or an increased danger of mortality, dear fellow gout patient. You make the call!

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Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional for any health concerns.