The Most Important Foods to Avoid With Gout
Waking up in the middle of the night with a gout attack is a very unpleasant experience. If you’ve ever awoken with this type of pain, you know you’d do just about anything to get rid of the pain. There are things you can do to reduce or eliminate the pain, but the best course of action is to try and prevent a gout attack in the first place. That begins with watching the foods you eat.
The most important kinds of food to avoid with gout are foods containing high purine levels. For the most part, gout has two main causes and purines are a major factor in both causes. Either you are eating too high an amount of purines or your body can’t properly use the purines you do eat. So it is very important that you control the purines in your diet. Foods that tend to be high in purines are organ meats, shellfish, alcohol, and certain legumes such as peanuts.
Other foods to avoid are high fatty foods or foods high in nitrates. The main reason for this is most gout patients are overweight. Being overweight puts extra pressure on your kidneys. Your kidneys play a vital role in helping you prevent gout. They help eliminate uric acid from your system so keeping them in good working order is very important.
Also, quite a few of the high purine foods come from fatty foods such as hamburger and hot dogs. Bacon is high in nitrates and the lower quality bacon usually comes from stomach. This type of bacon should be avoided at all costs. You can get thigh bacon and non-nitrate bacon.
As you can see, avoiding foods that cause gout such as high purine foods and more indirectly fatty foods will help you control not only your gout, but will also help you lose weight.
March 29 2010 11:12 am | Health