Gout Foods to Avoid List (What Is Safe to Eat)
Gout can be so painful and may affect your daily routines during flare-up. The good news, there is plenty of ways to cope with it. Even it is relatively easier to be treated than other kinds of arthritis. Diet is one of the best ways to help deal with the symptoms and keep the disease off. So here are gout foods to avoid list and what is safe to eat!
For many years, experts have been recommending people with gout to restrict foods high in purines, a substance in foods that your body turns into uric acid. See also why excess uric acid in the body is considered bad for gouty arthritis, in this section!
On the other hand, certain foods may help control your uric acid level, improving the symptoms of the disease and promoting a relief. Low fat dairy products, for example, may help stimulate more excretion of uric acid in the urine.
In diet for gout, the major goal is to reduce and control the number of uric acid. But it’s not only about uric acid. Appropriate diet can provide other benefits, these include:
- For weight control. With regular exercise, your diet plays a key role to keep your weight off. Obesity is considered bad for all kinds of arthritis, including gout.
- It’s undeniable that you diet is so essential to make sure cells of your body get plenty of nutrients every day. So, stick with a well-balanced diet! And don’t forget to watch on calories for your weight control! Even healthy goodies (including vegies and fruits) contain some calories!
- Hydration! Excess uric acid is removed through kidneys, which then goes away with urine. If you are being dehydrated, your kidneys cannot work optimally, making ‘excretion of uric acid through urine’ more difficult.
- Your diet would also help control the inflammation. For instance, you can restrict inflammatory-foods and eat more anti-inflammatory foods!
When it comes to diet for gout, we can classify foods into 3 main categories; low-purine foods, mid-purine foods, and high-purine foods. Since the goal is to keep uric acid low, avoiding high-purine foods is a must for people with gouty arthritis!
Depending on the level of your purines, a strict diet may be necessary to keep the level off. This is usually recommended during flare-up.
Therefore, you need to do this properly. For instance, some fatty foods are high in urine, but they also provide omega-3 fatty acids (which are essential for your heart health). In such case, choose fish low in purine such as salmon, or other high-omega-3 foods low in purines!
Also, it’s still important to have enough protein from your diet! Even though diet high in protein may provoke gout recurrence in people with a history of gout pain, this does’t mean you can skip protein at all costs.
With a personal history of gout attack, here are a few tips to eat protein safely:
- Your daily intake of protein shouldn’t be higher than 6 ounces a day, or follow as your doctor suggests!
- Prioritize protein-foods low in purines, such as; egg whites, chicken breast, soy products, low-fat dairy products, beans, and nuts!
- On the other hand, avoid any protein-foods high in purines. For examples; sweetbreads, goose (fatty protein), the skin of chicken, herring, anchovies, mackerel, and meat extracts.
The following brief summary is the list of some foods you can eat and bad ‘high-purine’ foods you need to avoid – see on the next page!
Well I’ve asked all around so I’ll do the same here: When taking vinegar for instance, is it only to be taken with water? Can it not be mixed with say, apple juice? And can you also add bicarb to this mixture as well? I’ve treated myself this way for a few years and have had no bad side effects but not sure if it works (as I also used ibuprofen for swelling and have decided to ween myself of this) I then would like some expert or regular user to let me know by taking the mixture as stated, would this help just as well as simply vinegar/water? Thanks for any reply if there’s someone out there.
It’s thought that vinegar can help provide numerous health benefits. Vinegar can restore the balance of pH, which then eventually may help treat gout. But I think the effectiveness of vinegar for gout is not scientifically confirmed yet. So, it’s better to talk to your physician before taking it to keep safe!
And yap, the use of vinegar for gout is commonly taken and mixed with a cup of water (for about each 2 tablespoon of vinegar). To improve the flavor, it can be mixed with others such as apple juice or others that are not high in purines.But to keep its effectiveness, it’s commonly recommended to be taken with water!
And don’t use your vinegar to replace any prescription medication! It should be only used for a complementary treatment!