Danger of Gout Risky Than You Think!
You might want to know causes of gout, symptoms, foods to avoid and its danger. Gout is inflammatory arthritis that patients with high uric acid level in blood for a long time always have. High uric acid forms urate crystals in tissues, especially in joints and around joints. Once facing triggers, acute arthritis pain will severely occur.
Gout is more common in men than women because men have higher uric acid level in blood than women. Gout treatment expenses are high. So, having health insurance is a good choice to be prepared. Let’s see other details of gout.
Symptoms of Gout
Do regular joint pains mean gout? What are symptoms? Is gout a genetic disease? You must be worried if you have joint pain. Men are highly to have gout more than women because men have higher uric acid level in blood. For men, uric acid level should not exceed 8 mg/dl, while for women, it should not exceed 6 mg/dl. Gout is also a genetic disease. Let’s see if your conditions of pain, swelling, redness are gout.
- Pain, swelling, redness, heat occur in toes, ankles, knees, wrists, knuckles and elbows. Toes always have the most pain. The pain mostly occurs in one joint, but some patients have pain in many joints in the same time.
- If you don’t have the right treatment, gout symptoms will come and go or become chronic symptoms that you will have more frequent and longer pains. And it will become chronic arthritis that leads to other complications such as kidney disease, kidney failure.
- Gout symptoms always occur at night and the pain will be more severe. Triggers are food with high uric acid, alcoholic beverage or stress.
- In initial stage, there is pain on either knee which comes and goes
Foods to Avoid
After checking the symptoms, you should be aware of foods to avoid. Is it true that chicken meat is not allowed if you have gout? Actually, chicken meat is not a cause of gout. This disease is due to high uric acid level in body and this acid is not found much in chicken meat. Uric acid is mostly produced in your own body, and partially from foods. Even though chicken meat is not a cause of gout, gout symptoms might be triggered by chicken meat or foods with high protein or uric acid. Thus, gout patients should avoid chicken meat and high uric acid foods as follows.
- All offal
- Seafood and poultry that should be consumed appropriately
- Sweet beverage with high fructose
- Alcoholic beverage
- Some beans such as read beans, green beans and soy beans
- Some vegetables such as bamboo shoot, mushroom and acacia pennata
- Red meat
Danger and Treatment
At this point, you might want to know danger and treatment of gout. As mentioned above, gout is due to high uric acid level in body; uric acid is generated from chemical reactions in living organism and partly from high uric acid foods such as offal, poultry, vegetable shoots, beans or beverages such as beers and fruit juice with high fructose.
Danger of gout is when your body has higher uric acid level than kidney’s capability to eliminate the acid. It leads to deteriorating kidney function that decrease capability to eliminate uric acid from body such as kidney disease or kidney failure which will cause higher uric acid level.
Having high uric acid level for a long time until having kidney disease and hypertension, it will lead to heart disease and stroke which is risky to have paralysis. From the data, male patients who have kidney failure and receive kidney dialysis partially have gout or high uric acid level in blood. Female patients who have kidney dialysis mostly have diabetes.
In terms of treatment, since gout is due to high uric acid level in body, this disease requires ongoing treatment by eliminating uric acid through urine or reducing uric acid production through medication as well as avoiding high uric acid foods. For patients with severe arthritis, they need nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug or colchicine to relive pain and swelling. Moreover, patients should receive ongoing medication to maintain uric acid to be lower than 6 mg/dl. If the symptoms can be controlled, there is less chance to have severe arthritis. Meanwhile, the treatment will maintain kidney capability and avoid deterioration from high uric acid.
Must Do
- Take medicine as prescribed strictly.
- Drink lots of water to eliminate uric acid from body and enhance kidney function.
- Avoid high uric acid foods and alcoholic beverages.
- In case of having illness, you should inform a doctor every time that you have gout as to avoid medicine that might trigger gout, or prevent gout symptoms after surgeries or other treatments.
- Have regular examination, follow-up of symptoms and treatment as a doctor appoints.
Prevention
Since gout is due to high uric acid, the prevention is behavior change such as eating behavior as to reduce risk of gout. If you don’t control gout symptoms, it might be life-threatening. Thus, we should know how to take care of ourselves.
- Consume carbohydrates that match body needs as to prevent protein metabolism in muscle as energy.
- Maintain standard weight.
- Drink sufficient water to eliminate uric acid from urine.
- Avoid sweet beverage or foods with high fructose because they increase uric acid.
- Avoid greasy foods such as fried foods and high fat foods because they reduce capability to eliminate uric acid.
Gout is caused by high uric acid in body that forms crystals in joints leading to arthritis. At present, gout is curable; however, if gout patients don’t receive treatment or have wrong treatment, there will be complications that cause kidney stones or kidney failure. Thus, if you have joint pain, you should get examination and receive correct treatment to relive the symptoms.
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Source: Searched on 04/08/2023