Video:Foods to Control Gout Attacks
with Dr. Pamela RosenthalFood may be nearly as effective at controlling gout as medicine is, so it's important to watch what you eat if you've got gout. This health video from About.com will go over some of the foods that will help with controlling gout attacks.See Transcript
Transcript:Foods to Control Gout Attacks
Hi, I'm Dr. Pamela Rosenthal, Rheumatologist at the NYU Langone Medical Center for About.com. In this video, I'll be discussing some foods that may be helpful in preventing gout attacks.
Gout Is Connected to Diet
As many of you may know, gout is often thought of as a disease of overindulgence. So there are foods such as meat, organ meats, and beer that can contribute to your risk of gout. On the other hand, there are also foods that may reduce your risk of gout. Gout is a function of your serum uric acid level, which itself is a function of purine metabolism -- an important process involving the breakdown of DNA, RNA, and related molecules.
Some Foods Help Control Gout
As it turns out, not all protein-rich foods are created equal. While some protein-rich foods are known to contribute to your risk of gout, others, such as low-fat dairy products, are looking as though they perhaps reduce your risk of gout -- maybe through promoting the excretion of uric acid through the kidneys and hence lowering your serum uric acid level.
Foods With Vitamin C May Help With Gout
In addition, there are foods that are rich in vitamin C that may help reduce your serum uric acid level. Foods that are rich in vitamin C include citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons, grapefruits. Whole fruits that include a component of fiber are probably better for you overall in the end than juice from the same fruit. Though having said that, perhaps even vitamin C supplements may also help reduce serum uric acid levels. This, in turn, can help to prevent gout attacks.
The Effect Wine Has on Gout
Also, there is a little bit of a paradox around wine. It's well known that alcohol and especially beer consumption may increase your gout risk. Much of what we understand about diet and gout risk comes from epidemiological studies where people answer detailed questionnaires about what they eat, when they eat it, and so forth, including the alcohol that they drink. It turned out in one of these big population studies that moderate consumption of wine is associated with a decreased risk of gout, relative to beer or spirits, for example. Moderate, as in one or less glasses of wine a day, appears to reduce your risk of gout.
In addition, diets hight in vegetables, by definition of where the balance of calories are coming from, are associated with lower risk for gout.
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