Gout and low carb diet
I’ve had gout for 15 years and have generally kept in under controlwith indomethacin at the first twinges. I’m sure that the extra 50lbs that I’m carrying are a big factor. I’m interested in trying alowcarb diet but am concerned that a high protein diet will increase myuric acid levels. Have any of you tried a low carb diet? What wasyour experience? Is it a good idea or not ?
Sanjuana Manser on September 20th, 2007
Many of these “Anti Atkin’s Diet” web sitesare really simply propaganda sites for thosewho advocate a Vegan diet/Anti-killing ofanimals lifestyle.
I will admit that I lost thirty pounds in afew weeks on a high meat/virtually no carbsdiet that featured sausages and liverwurstas well as sodium nitrite. All of theseare reputed to be bad for gout. Shortly afterI went off the Atkins diet, resumed theconsumption of carbohydrates and alsodecreased my water intake, I had a severeand disabling initial attack of gout.
Perhaps due to my inability to obtain anyRx for Allopurinol, in addition to painsin my feet, I am also suffering twingesin my knuckles and have difficulties inmaintaining my grasp on objects.
I think, however, that Atkins would stillbe safe for you if you avoid the high purinecontent items: suasages, liverwurst, sodiumnitrite, maintain your water intake at amuch higher level than I did and maintain thewater intake for atleast two weeks afterending your diet.
Are you currently taking Allopurinol?Initiation of allopurinol will oftenincrease uric acid levels, so you mightexercise caution there.
Sabina Shamel on September 20th, 2007
The issues are two fold.
First and most obvious, most of us are over weight and would like tolose 20 to 80 total pounds of body weight.
Second, the atkins diet naturally puts us into the state where we areeating more, not less, of the purene containing foods that we believetrigger, if not cause, gout.
Specific behavior of one person’s body on the Atkins diet, i.e. Don’sdescription, has been given but as far as I know, no real study ofthe effect on weight and on gout has been written up for confirmedgout patients who try the atkins regime.
My personal opinion, and this is clearly only an opinion, is that itis probably the logical way for us to live but I only havespeculation about it and no actual data on the subject. I suspectthat if Don had remained in keytosis, that is if he had kept his bodystarved for carbohydrates, he would not have suffered his goutattack. I believe that gout is fundamentally related to diabetes andthat the same kinds of things that are going on in a diabetic’s lifeare also going on in a gout sufferers life. Moreover, I alsospeculate that if we are in keytosis, that is if our system hasinsufficient carbohydrate to survive and is constantly in the stateof needing to convert fat into energy in order to survive, we willalso stay out of gout attacks.
The important issue here is that you cannot keep losing weightindefinitely and some day you have to taper off the system andconsume enough calories to maintain a constant weight. However, itdoes not mean that you have to allow your body to move to theglycogen mode of producing energy. You can maintain weight, in factyou can even gain weight, while remaining in keytosis. You just haveto keep the total amount of carbohydrates you consume low.
Finally, if you look at how much protein you need each day in orderto survive, you will discover that indeed, it is very little. Look itup on yahoo and do a search for the amount and you will find that youonly need about 3 ounces of protein every day. That’s a very smallamount and since almost everything you eat has some protein, youdon’t have to eat much to maintain what you need. The problem is thatin order to get any food at all without carbohydrate, it is just alot easier to use meat as the food substitute. However, if you lookat your caloric intake carefully you will discover that by increasingyour fat intake drmatically, like for example using whipping creaminstead of milk for your very small amount of carbohydratecontaining, sugarless, cereal, you can eat well and feel pretty goodabout the meal and keep the carbs low without adding substantially toyour protein load.
That is one example and I am sure there are others but I have notsystematically gone through the list of can eat and cannot eat items.I need to do it before I resume my run at atkins. I did try it but ina haphazzard way while I was stricken with a pretty bad gout attackand ended up making the attack worse and gaining 5 pounds in fivedays because I cheated at the end of each day by eating cookies atnight after having been good all day.
(It woin’t hurt will it if I eat only one cookie every ten minutesfor, oh, lets say 120 minutes???… mmmm filled the tank withcarbohydrate each night and never got it empty during the day-)like Isaid-1 pound a day. Next time I will get serious but I have to be alot better informed as to what I can and cannot eat and how I can getenough to eat on a sustained basis on the atkins diet withoutdramatically increasing the purene load on my system. I would welcomesuggestions as to what I can and cannot eat that is low incarbohydrate and yet is not high in purenes.
By the way, my 84 year old mother, who lives with me, heard metalking about the concept and she also read Atkins books andconcluded that she needed to try the diet. She suffers from gout thatis under control completely now for 5 years with allopurinol but shealso has peripheral neuropathy. She didn’t need or want to loseweight but she has lost a little on the diet. However, the dramaticresult for her is that her neuropathy has gotten a lot better. She isa lot more active now and has a lot more energy. I was terrified whenshe went on the diet and I was afraid that her gout would return butthere has been no sign in her life of the gout monster and she feelsa lot better. During her 4 months of atkins she has lost about two tofive pounds-she is not trying to lose weight- and her energy leveland activity level are way up.