Dr. Lu said: High uric acid causes gout. What harm does it do to our body? How to take care of it?

I guess you must have friends with "high uric acid" or "gout". Anyway, there are more than one or two like this around me.

Yes, with the improvement of living standards, various metabolic diseases are becoming more and more common nowadays. The white paper on the current status of gout in China released in 2017 gave astonishing data: There are more than 80 million gout patients in my country, and gout has become the second largest metabolic disease in my country after diabetes. My personal experience is that in addition to having a second child, taking cephalosporins, and allergies, "high uric acid" and "gout" have become the most common reasons for refusing to drink at the wine table. Even I myself once had a physical examination where my blood uric acid was found to be higher than the normal value.

However, despite this, many people still have many misunderstandings about gout. They don’t even know what terrible adverse effects high uric acid will have on the body. What should be paid attention to in life after suffering from gout? It’s not very clear either. So, today let’s talk about hyperuricemia and gout.

Many people actually equate "high uric acid" and "gout", but in fact, they are two completely different diseases.

Yes, hyperuricemia and gout are two diseases.

Simply put, hyperuricemia means that uric acid is higher than a certain value. To put it more specifically, it means that we usually go to the hospital twice (not on the same day) to draw blood to check blood uric acid under a normal diet. The blood uric acid results of the two times are higher than 420 μmol/L for men and higher than 360 μmol/L for women. However, it needs to be emphasized that because a considerable number of patients with hyperuricemia may never feel uncomfortable or have gouty arthritis throughout their lives, it is also called asymptomatic hyperuricemia.

But gout is different. You can simply understand gout as hyperuricemia + joint problems. In fact, gout is caused by too much uric acid in the blood. Too much uric acid escapes from the blood vessels and runs into the joints, soft tissues and even our kidneys, causing arthritis, skin lesions and kidney damage.

It’s all good, but why is the uric acid in the blood so high?

In fact, our bodies produce a lot of uric acid every day, because our cells are constantly metabolizing, and dead cells are decomposed to produce uric acid. This kind of "endogenous uric acid" produced by ourselves is ". The various protein foods we usually eat will also be catabolized to produce a lot of uric acid, which is "exogenous uric acid."

However, the reason why the uric acid in the blood of healthy people is not high is because our body also excretes uric acid at the same time, so the generated uric acid and the excreted uric acid have reached a healthy dynamic balance. That way there won't be any problems.

However, as people age, their uric acid excretion function will gradually decline, and the rate of uric acid excretion will naturally slow down. And if there are some problems with the body itself at this time, the excretion of uric acid will be slower. At the same time, if you don’t pay attention to your diet and eat too many high-purine foods, blood uric acid will naturally accumulate in the human body, eventually forming hyperuricemia. When hyperuricemia reaches a certain level, uric acid will flow from the blood into joints, ligaments and kidneys, and may even destroy pancreatic islet cells, secondary to and aggravating diabetes.

What to do is always what everyone is most concerned about. In my previous article, "Refusing Rumors: I have high uric acid and "gout", do I need to lower my uric acid quickly? Doctor: No, "It introduces whether uric acid should be reduced and how to reduce it. Today we will talk about what else needs to be paid attention to besides lowering uric acid.

Because weight control is the top priority in the treatment of gout patients, exercise is naturally also very important.

More importantly, relevant research has found that low-intensity aerobic exercise can indeed reduce the incidence of gout, but moderate-to-high-intensity exercise may reduce uric acid excretion, thereby increasing uric acid levels. On the contrary, it increases the incidence of gout. Therefore, we recommend that patients with high uric acid and gout should choose low-intensity aerobic exercise, such as walking, jogging, cycling, etc. You should exercise regularly and gradually, starting from low intensity and gradually transitioning to moderate intensity, and avoid strenuous exercise.

In addition, exercise can increase sweating, reduce renal blood flow, and reduce uric acid excretion. Therefore, you should drink an appropriate amount of water during or after exercise to promote uric acid excretion. Not only should you pay attention when training, but when gout attacks, you should avoid exercise and focus on rest.

Gout patients must eat a balanced diet, especially increasing the intake of fruits and vegetables. However, since they must also consider a low-purine diet, and gout patients may often have underlying diseases such as diabetes, when it comes to the choice of fruits and vegetables, We generally recommend:

Try to avoid eating vegetables with high purine content such as mushrooms, mushrooms, kelp, and seaweed, and you should not eat too much fruits with particularly high sugar content (such as oranges, lychees, longans, persimmons, etc. ). All leafy vegetables, melons, and tuber vegetables contain very low purine and are suitable for long-term consumption.

Because meat products themselves contain a lot of protein and purine, gout patients should pay special attention when eating animal meat products.

Generally speaking, the purine content of red meat (beef, sheep, and pigs) is significantly higher than that of white meat (chicken, duck, goose, freshwater fish). For the same animal, the purine content of offal is significantly higher than that of meat, and the purine content of fat meat is higher than that of lean meat. Cured meat has higher purine content than fresh meat. At the same time, try to avoid excessive processing of meat, such as frying, braising, etc. Correspondingly, egg and milk products have low purine content and high protein content, which are relatively more suitable for gout patients.