Gout Diet Blog

Urate level in your blood, taken over time, is a good measure of yourkidney’s ability to rid your system of urate.

Sodium urate, to be precise mono sodium urate, is sparingly solublein water, or blood, and a number of 7 suggests that you are at asaturated level. If you are having an attack your level will almostcertainly be 7 because that is where it is when things are inequillibrium. The Solid monosodium urate (MSU) is in equillibriumwith the dissolved MSU and untill your system can get the blood MSUto go down, it will be very hard for the crystals to redissolve.

If you have a large excess of uric acid in your system, such asarnoldtheskier apparently has, enough to form trophi by the way, theneven though you stop the production of uric acid with allopurinol,there can be enough uric acid in your fatty tissue, to keep youmiserable even if nothing is coming in because allopurinol is beingused.

When your blood urate level has dropped to say, 5 or less, then thereis a capacity for the blood to dissolve any remaining urate crystalsand it can also excrete some of your uric acid that is converted intosodium urate from the excess you have in your body. Thus, bymaintaining a lower than 7 urate level in your blood, if you can infact get to that point, you will be able to rid your system of theexcess and reasonably expect to live gout free.

Understand this however, the urate level in your blood is not anindicator of how much uric acid you have in your system. The acidform of uric acid is an organic compound that hides in your fattytissue, or as a deposit in your joints as trophi, and it can remainthere for years and years. You could, for example, be on allopurinolfor 3 years, be 30 pounds over weight, have a blood urate level of 5-a good number, and still get a bad attack of gout when you lose 15 ofthose 30 pounds really fast.

It is the mono sodium urate dissolved in your blood that crystallizesout of solution that causes your gout attacks. It is possible tomaintain high systemic levels of uric acid and not ever get into thegout crystal formation stage.

Long term, take allopurinol, monitor your urate level in your bloodand alter the dosage of allopurinol until your urate level begins todrop. As arnholtheskier mentioned, this can be 900 mg for some severecases but most men are brought back to a maintenance dosage ofbetween 200-300mg long term.

A final editorial comment, I also resisted taking allopurinol and Iam only on a 100 mg per day dosage and suspect that I will have to gohigher to finally clear up my gout attacks. But there is no questionwhether anyone who has had a second attack should do it. The longterm effects of allopurinol may be some liver and some kidney damage.Your gout will only get worse and you are not going to be able tocontrol it with diet or water or preying. If you have severe sideeffects then you may have to get really strict with yourself but formy money, it is just plain silly to avoid allopurinol treatment ifyou have had a second attack.