What to Eat if you Suffer from Gout
People will normally start to conduct research about gout after they have suffered an attack. They suffer a lot of pain in an attack and are looking for ways to stop this from happening. It is not long before the research tells them that the cause of the pain is their diet.
Normally gout sufferers will instantly ask, “so what can I eat then?” and immediately focus on the foods which they enjoy the most. Its only natural to do this, but you need to get over these kind of questions and start to think about your long term health and the effects these favourite foods could be having on you.
Stopping the pain is the first thing on your mind when you are having the attack but as the pain wears off and you realize that you will have to make some changes in your life then suddenly you start to think that maybe you won’t have another attack or maybe the next won’t be so bad and you will be able to bear the pain.
In fact if you don’t change your eating habits your gout will get worse and worse and you could well end up in hospital with it. The uric acid crystals that have built up around your joints , particularly your big toe joint, will not go away on their own. If you carry on eating the same things that caused your gout then you will carry on having the pain.
Try to change your eating habits not just over the next few months, but over the next few years. Because you need to be making changes over a long period so that you can experience less pain from gout over a long period of time.
So what lifestyle changes should you be making right now to prevent another gout attack? Get a small pocket diary and make a note of everything you eat and drink for the next two weeks, this means you can look at your diet with certainty rather than thinking you eat to much of this and not enough of that. Two weeks is a good amount of time as it allows you to stop trying to be good and only eat salads so the diary looks good.
You should avoid foods that are high in purines and that is what allows your body to make the uric acid that crystallizes and causes your gout. So the first thing you need to do is cut items that contain this out of your diet.
After two weeks of keeping a record of your food intake, use it for another two weeks but this time highlight where you have managed to cut down on the bad foods. Concentrate on one thing at a time, once you have cut one thing down, move onto something else. After a while you should see a reduction in your gout problems. Also increase your water intake at the same time. Are you wondering if there are any food types which will actually help with your gout?
