If You Stop Drinking Will Gout Go Away?

… Continued …

Alcohol (especially beer) is high in purines

Researchers blame the high purine content of alcohol as one of the major reason of why people with gout should restrict alcohol or even stop drinking if necessary for best outcome.

As noted before, the purines can break down to become uric acid through the process of digestion. If you drinking too much, this means you bring more uric acid into the bloodstream – increasing the chance of developing more deposits of urate crystals and worsening your gout!

The high risk of kidney damage

Again, the effect of too much drinking can affect many parts of the body. In general, it is often related with the damage to the liver, the place where alcohol is metabolized.

Drinking too much can be bad for the health of your kidneys, too. And you know well that it’s so important to have healthy kidneys if you have gout since these organs play a key role in helping the body to remove excess uric acid through urine.

How does alcohol affect the kidneys?

The main function of the kidneys is to help filter waste products and harmful substances from the blood, and alcohol is one of these substances. Over time, the high accumulation alcohol in the blood can have contribution to cause poor function in the kidneys, making them less powerful in filtering your blood.

Alcohol can dehydrate your body!

As written before, people with gout is recommended to keep hydrated since the kidneys need plenty of water to work optimally in filtering blood.

One of the effects when you are dehydrated is the poor function of the kidneys in filtering excess uric acid from bloodstream. In other words, dehydration can make the body lose its balance in controlling normal level of uric acid. And this can be bad if you are an individual with gout.

More alcohol you drink means the greater chance for your body to dry out. The drying effect is not only bad for the kidneys, but also can cause bad effect to the normal functions of cells and other organs.

The risk of high blood pressure (hypertension)

Drinking too much increases the risk of hypertension. Even alcohol can reduce the effectiveness of some medicines for hypertension, too. And chronic hypertension can affect the function of the kidneys, the reason of why monitoring blood pressure should be a part of treatment plan for gout.

All of these reasons are strong enough to make sure that alcohol (especially excessive alcohol consumption) does cause bad effect to people who suffer from gout.