The Missing Link Between Gout and Alcohol Consumption

Alcohol has often been identified as a significant risk factor in the development of excessive uric acid levels (or hyperuricemia) and gout. In many instances, episodes of gout are triggered in the middle of night after a particularly lively session of inebriation.

For centuries, there has been a strong association between the occurrence of gout and specific lifestyles characterised by diets rich in red meat, high intakes of salt and alcohol, and a pronounced preference to a sedentary life with very little or totally non-existent physical exercise. This is the sort of lifestyle that many people tend to adopt, unfortunately, as they advance towards middle age, the lifestyle once adopted by kings and noblemen. As a result, gout in the past was often called “the royal affliction.”

Although the association is there, the exact relationship between alcohol and gout has not been pinpointed, until recently. Recent research studies, however, have indicated that alcohol appears to interfere with the body’s ability to dispose of uric acid. Uric acid produced elsewhere in your body dissolves in blood and is carried to the kidneys for filtration and excretion along with urine. But as alcohol breaks down into its component acids, the body cannot allow these to accumulate as they are more dangerous and toxic than uric acid. The kidney therefore disposes of them ahead of all other waste that it has filtered from the blood.

The uric acid builds up in your blood, which the body then converts to crystals to get it out of the blood, and the crystals are deposited in your joints adding to the accumulated deposits already present there. Once that, too, exceeds tolerable levels, the joints become inflamed with gout.

On the other hand, not all kinds of alcohol contribute to the occurrence of gout. Among all the alcohols studied, beer poses the highest risk, while wine and spirits have the least risk. It makes you wonder what it is about beer that makes it so critical.

Some researchers point to the observation that beer is the only alcoholic drink that contains significant levels of purines. On top of this, there is a difference in behaviour between wine drinking and beer drinking. People drink wine usually with a full meal or with healthy foods like salads, fruits, and cheese. Men drinking beer usually eat with it salty and fatty snacks like peanuts and chips. This brings on that critical combination that is sure to trigger gout attacks: increased production coupled with reduced excretion of uric acid.

Gout Treatment

If you have a gout attack, many doctors recommend oral doses of ibuprofen or naproxen, available in both prescription and nonprescription versions, or other anti-inflammatory drugs. If you are taking aspirin, your doctor may recommend that you stop it temporarily. Aspirin can slow the elimination of uric acid and make gout worse. But if you take a low dose of aspirin to prevent other problems such as a heart attack, check with your doctor before stopping it.

For reliable Gout treatment information, read Cure Gout Now; an easy to follow, comprehensively researched eBook by Lisa McDowell that shows you how to change your diet and gain control of your gout wth useful strategies that have been proven to improve health for people with gout.

Find out how Lisa, a long-suffering wife of a gout victim, challenged the uncaring drug companies and made a shocking discovery that cured her husband once and for all.