What is good nutritional advice for gout? I suffer from the rheumatic disease gout and I heard that it helps to eat less purine. How do I do that?
Anonymously
Patricia Schutte, nutritionist
Gout is a rheumatic disease caused by uric acid buildup in your body. Normally you pass uric acid out, but this process is gout disturbed. The excess uric acid deposits in the joints in gout, which can cause unpleasant complaints.
Uric acid is a breakdown product of purine. You get this from your diet, but most of it your body makes itself. In the past, people with gout were therefore advised to follow a strict purine-restricted diet, but nowadays the standard approach consists of medicines and advice to prevent new attacks of gout.
It is therefore not wise to eat differently on your own. You run the risk of not getting enough nutrients. It only makes sense to see if this helps in your case if your doctor recommends a purine-restricted diet. Then let a dietician to advise. In general, you do not have to avoid products, but it is important that you do not eat them too often and too much.
Can you not adjust anything to your diet yourself? Anyway. There are a number of things that help reduce the risk of a gout attack:
- Provide a healthy diet with lots of variety. The Wheel of Five provides a good basis for this.
- Drink as little alcohol as possible, because alcohol raises the uric acid level in your blood.
- Make sure you get 2 to 3 liters of fluids throughout the day. This means you have to urinate more often and the uric acid is removed more quickly.
- Lose weight slowly if you are overweight. This lowers the uric acid level in the blood. Do not use a crash diet, because if you lose weight quickly, the amount of uric acid in the blood rises.
- And again: do not follow a purine-restricted diet until the doctor advises.
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