Gout Diet

Gout Diet

Gout prevention following an easy and delicious gout diet based on 2 pillars:

Diet for gout

Gout and kidney stones are both caused by long term high levels of uric acid in your blood:

  • 85% of this uric acid is made by your body
  • 15% of this uric acid comes from what you eat and drink.

Diets for gout based on avoiding purines – purine causes uric acid levels to rise – may lower this 15% portion of uric acid in your blood and does help in gout prevention between 2 acute gout attacks.

Apart from gout and diet restrictions, any uric acid gout diet should compliment food products improving your body to pass the 85% uric acid it produces itself. This gout diet information is strongly ignored by some people pushing the use of medicine for treating gout.

Gout and foods

What is gout and why is food so important in treating gout? During history, gout disease used to be called a king’s and rich man’s disease because most people those days:

  • hadn’t access to purine rich food
  • had a lot of daily exercise
  • weren’t obese

Nowadays however:

  • most people have access to purine rich food like seafood in cans and beer
  • most people don’t exercise
  • just admit it: if you live in the US, you are most likely close to obesity and to make things worse, people following the Atkins diet are in even greater risk of developing gout and people that go on a fast crash diet equally fast increase the amount of uric acid in their blood and crash to worsen any gout symptom.

Gout arthritis evolved from a king’s disease to a common form of arthritis due to a dramatic change in modern lifestyle with bad choices for health and food.

Gout diet foods to eat

Apart from following a gout prevention diet that avoids food rich in purines, the best diet for gout includes not only cherry juice being a proven gout home remedy but many more food products that through the centuries have been proven gout natural remedies. Read more at our must eat diet sheet for gout.

Low purine diet for gout

The easiest and most logical arthritis gout diet is avoiding foods that cause gout. Below is a list of foods high in purines yet it is recommended you do keep a gout diary as not all purine high foods cause symptoms of gout in all
people. As with all general information about gout: everybody is different!

Diet for gout during an acute gout attack

  • drink 8 to 12 cups – 2 to 3 liters – of water. Or at least half of this amount of water and the other half of healthy juices -like cherry juice for gout- or coffee
  • do not drink alcohol, unless your doctor prescribed you to a one glass of red wine a day. In this case do discuss with your doctor what benefits your health most during an anti gout diet
  • avoid foods bad for gout and high in purines: seafood, meat, foods that contain yeast (bread and beer)
  • go easy on gout nutrition eating foods with moderate amounts of purines like asparagus, mushrooms, peas, kidney and lima beans, spinach, whole-grain breads, whole-grain cereals and white poultry meats.

The diet for gout sufferers therefore should contains foods low in gout purine like fruits, fruit juices, coffee, tea, pure chocolate, cocoa, tomatoes, green vegetables, nuts, bread without yeast, low fat milk and low fat dairy products like yogurt and cheese.

Gout diet advice for chronic gout or in between gout attacks

Continue the above mentioned diet for gout patients with acute gout. A gout diary will pay off to find which and how much of the purine rich foods for gout mentioned on the gout diet sheet you should be able to eat without suffering a gout attack.

Follow a normal, nutritious diet and follow a diet to maintain or reach slow and steadily – 1 to 2 pounds a week, or half to 1 kilo a week – a healthy body weight since overweight people have more chance to accumulate uric acid in the body.

Gout diet summarized

Mostly a diet in gout articles are what I call gout free diets only eliminating purines. However, the best gout diets work 2 ways:

  • by flushing out as much as gout causing purines from your body as well as
  • by keeping your purine intake as low as possible.

Rule of thumb of any diet to prevent gout should be lowering your amount of protein intake to sufficient levels only. Good protein sources are tofu and low fat dairy products. Add to that small amounts of peanut butter and eggs and only eat 4 to 6 ounces (120 to 180 grams) of meat, fish, and poultry. Do follow a gout purine diet with clear gout diet restrictions and to make it more fun: lots of gout diet recipes.

Any gout treatment diet should strive to reach or maintain a healthy weight. Limit the fats in your gout diet foods by choosing lean meats, fish, skinless poultry, and low fat milk products. Avoid high fat desserts and deep fried foods and only use 3 to 6 teaspoons a day of butter, oil or salad dressing.

A good gout diet plan includes high carbohydrate foods like bread products without yeast, cereals, rice, pasta, vegetables and lots of fruits, especially the well know gout cherries and equally effective pineapple.

Personalize your gout cure diet by keeping a gout diary noting down everything you eat, and all you do for exercise and avoiding stress until you find the gout diet and gout nutrition that fits you and your lifestyle best. Leave a comment if you want a copy of our free gout recipes ebook.