Gout is a very painful inflammatory arthritis that usually affects the joint in the big toe. People who suffer from gout have recurring bouts of the gout and the toe will be very red and inflamed and extremely painful. If you have gout there are foods you should avoid because they have a lot of purines in them and this can affect how much uric acid you have. According to Wikipedia, ” The crystallization of uric acid, often related to relatively high levels in the blood, is the underlying cause of gout. This can occur for a number of reasons, including diet, genetic predisposition, or underexcretion of urate, the salts of uric acid.[4] Underexcretion of uric acid by the kidney is the primary cause of hyperuricemia in about 90% of cases, while overproduction is the cause in less than 10%.”
There are other things you can do to Prevent Gout Flare-ups With or Without Medicine. Certain pain medications and icing the toe may help. My mother has gout flare ups sometimes and in researching for ways to help her I cam across folks saying how drinking Barley Water helped them because it flushes the kidneys, and so flushes the uric acid quicker. When she has more that one or two of the foods with high purines in them in a short period of time she will make a batch of barley water and drink it for a day or two untill she knows enough time has passed for her system to be back to normal. Since she doesn’t get a gout attack when she does this I assume it helps to prevent gout attacks. I am no doctor so maybe she just didn’t get a flare up that time but it is an easy thing to make and drink so why not drink it and maybe avoid a painful flare up. Bembu shares this list of foods to avoid due to the high purine content in them.
