Throughout history, the human economy has never been so highly developed, with abundant materials, more and more types of food, and more and more wealth and diseases. In addition to the previous high blood lipids, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar, the fourth highest level is high uric acid. In severe cases, it may develop into gout. These chronic diseases cannot be caused without eating, because eating too many high-calorie and high-purine foods leads to high uric acid content in the blood and cannot be metabolized. For patients with hyperuricemia and gout, one of the dietary principles is to reduce the intake of high-purine foods to alleviate the condition.

What are hyperuricemia and gout?

1. What is uric acid

Biological genetic material is called nucleic acid, which includes DNA and RNA. The smallest unit of nucleic acid is nucleotide. In other words, nucleic acids are made up of nucleotides. Nucleotides are composed of three parts: a phosphate molecule, a pentose sugar, and a base. Bases include purine and pyrimidine. This purine is one of the protagonists we are going to discuss today. Uric acid is the end product of purine metabolism in the body. Uric acid is not very soluble in water. To put it nicely, it is slightly soluble in water. Because it is not very soluble in water, when uric acid reaches a certain concentration, it can easily escape from the water and form crystals. This concentration is the diagnostic concentration of hyperuricemia, which is greater than 420 umol/L for men; >360 microns/L for women..

2. Excessive uric acid

First of all, literally In other words, "hyperuricemia" means that the uric acid content in the blood exceeds the standard, just like we say that hypertension is caused by excessive blood pressure. Secondly, this excessive uric acid refers to uric acid in the blood, not uric acid in other places, such as urine. Let’s look at the medical definition. Hyperuricemia refers to the fasting blood uric acid level in a normal purine diet, twice on different days (not on the same day, the diagnosis can be confirmed by measuring twice): men > 420 umol/L; women > 360 microns/L..

3. What is gout

Gout is relapsing acute gouty arthritis, gout stones, joint deformities, uric acid kidney stones and kidney disease based on hyperuricemia. Gout can be understood as the late stage of hyperuricemia. On the basis of hyperuricemia, as the concentration of uric acid increases, urate continues to precipitate from the body into crystals, and then deposits in human joints and surrounding soft tissues, blood vessels, kidneys and other parts. Deposits of urate crystals in joints produce a chronic inflammatory response. An acute attack of gout occurs when an acute inflammatory response occurs in the joints under the influence of triggers. Long-term chronic inflammation damages joint tissue and leads to joint deformity. Uric acid crystals are infiltrated by various inflammatory factors to form tophi. The formation of gout also requires certain conditions, so not all patients with high uric acid will have gout. About 5%-15% of patients will develop gout.

Dietary Principles

1) Limit alcohol consumption (especially beer)

2) Low calorie: control energy intake to prevent overweight or obesity. Appropriate amounts of carbohydrates (such as steamed buns, rice, noodles, etc.) can prevent tissue decomposition and produce a large amount of acidic products. Try to choose milk or eggs for protein, and use less fatty meat, pork belly, and seafood.

3) Oligouria: Reduce the intake of high-purine foods and control it to 200 mg/day

4) Low-fat: Reduce the intake of high-fat foods. Fat has the effect of inhibiting uric acid excretion and intake should be limited. The daily amount of fat should be controlled at about 25g, mainly vegetable oil.

5) Low salt: limit salt to 5 grams per day

6) Limit fructose: reduce the intake of fructose-rich beverages such as honey

7) Drinking more water (2000 ml/day) helps to excrete uric acid

8) Increase the intake of fresh vegetables

9) Eat more alkaline foods: Gout patients should eat more Vegetables and fruits, because vegetables and fruits are alkaline foods, can promote the dissolution and excretion of uric acid deposits in the body, such as watermelon, winter melon, etc.

10) Alkalize urine: In addition to drinking more water to promote uric acid excretion, you can take baking soda to keep urine weakly alkaline. You can also take milk, citrus, etc. to alkalize urine.

Dietary taboos

Foods with high purine content must be fasted at any stage. The classification of purine content in food is as shown in the figure above.

Purine is easily soluble in water, and meat soup (including fish soup, duck soup, and chicken soup) is high in purine.

Taboo animal offal, fat meat, gravy, thick soup, barbecue, fried food, carbonated drinks, chili, curry, chili, mustard, beer, aged rice wine, sardines, anchovies, sizzling squid, Fried pork liver, etc.

Tips: Soak the meat (pork, beef, mutton) before frying, blanch it in boiling water, and filter out some purine.

Yoghurt contains a lot of lactic acid, which competes with uric acid for excretion, which is not good for gout patients, so you should pay attention to controlling the intake during an acute attack.