Is Gout Really Just Arthritis?

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.

The body can normally dissolve uric acid in the blood. Uric acids are filtered by the kidney and eliminated in the body as through the urine. However, abnormally high levels of uric acid can occur and these are deposited in the body.

Abnormally high levels of uric acid will result in your body becoming unable to process it and that leads to Gout.The kidneys too can be overwhelmed by the amount of uric acid and they will then fail to cleanse the body adequately.

As with most things eating a few foods which are high in purine is fine, but when you start to overdo it your body will let you know it. The medical term for high levels of uric acid is hyperuricemia, but that doesn’t automatically mean that you have gout, it does mean however that you should be taking even more notice of what you are eating.

If you are reading this and you are a man then there is a good chance that you have or will develop gout, the risk of women developing gout is much lower than men. This may be due to the differences in diet or alcohol intake. Men tend to eat more red meat than women and that is a contributing factor for gout.

When you notice your toe joint swelling and turning red it may well be the start of a gout attack, they often start in one joint. Many men have said that their attacks start in their big toe and while they may progress to other joints the pain is so bad that it really doesn’t matter. Gout can be an extremely debilitating illness.

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.