When your body has a build up of uric crystals around your joints you will experince pain, that pain is knows as Gout. The reason uric crystals build up is because you are either taking in to many for your your body to handle or you have something wrong with you medically that prevents your body breaking down foods high in purine correctly.
Your body can deal with almost everything that you throw at it, but if you have any sort of kidney disease or problem then your body will have problems dealing with uric acid. The uric acid that can’t be filtered and expelled in your urine will turn into crystals and these crystals congregate in your joints and cause gout pain.
No one ever thinks about their kidneys until they start to malfunction in some way, one of the functions that your kidneys perform is to clean uric acid from your system and send it out of your body in your urine. When your kidneys stop filtering and removing uric acid you are in with a good chance of developing gout.
As with most things eating a few foods which are high in purine is fine, but when you start to overdo it your body will let you know it. The medical term for high levels of uric acid is hyperuricemia, but that doesn’t automatically mean that you have gout, it does mean however that you should be taking even more notice of what you are eating.
Men usually eat more red meat than the women in their lives and that is part of the reason why the incidences of gout are much higher in men than they are in women. If a man has a relative who has gout then he should take extra precautions as family history is another contributing factor.
Gout attacks have been known to start with sudden severe pain in a single joint. It is characterised by redness, swelling, and hotness in the area where the gout attack occurs. There are a few cases that gout develops in several joints resembling a rheumatoid arthritis like appearance. In most cases, gout attacks are confined to the big toe.
Gout is generally a controllable disease with application of proper treatment and dietry care. No matter how much you love the foods that are high in purines, such as shellfish and game, the pain of a gout attack should be enough to remind you why you have to give them up. Change your diet, get some exercise and reduce your weight and your gout attacks should become few and far between.
