In order to achieve an immediate therapeutic effect, people suffering from such a disease as gout, dietitians prescribe special diet foods. From medical practice there are many cases when, thanks to a strict diet, if a patient has kidney or joint damage, a positive therapeutic result has been obtained. This is because the diet for this disease helps reduce the production of exogenous purines
Adherence to a strict diet for gout affecting the joints of the legs is not at all determined by strict fasting, neither during its recurring periodic attacks, nor in the period between them. It is necessary to accurately select food products whose use is vital for the patient, which is an important point of treatment.
People with gout should follow a specific diet to help stabilize uric acid levels. In any person, during a routine examination, you can quite accidentally find an increase in the indicators of this parameter. In this case, you need to adhere to the diet of the diet. This approach to the preparation of the patient's menu leads to a significant decrease in the likelihood of recurrence of attacks of the disease, allows you to avoid the bulky deposition of purines, namely a significant amount of their compounds in organs and tissues.
The main principles of nutritional therapy against gout
A patient with gout should eat systematically, dividing the entire daily portion of food into at least 4 meals. This will help stop the process of saturating blood serum with purine bases. In no case is it recommended to overeat with gout, otherwise an increase in the patient's body weight is possible, which negatively affects the joints during movement. But starvation should not be allowed either. The body weight of obese people should be gradually reduced, but not more than 2 kg per month.
Throughout the day, a patient with gout should consume about 2 liters of water during remission and at least 3 liters in case of exacerbation of the disease. It should be remembered that the use of mineral water, which contains alkalis, favorably promotes the elimination of urates from the patient's body.
Foods banned against gout
A very important point is to choose the right diet for a patient with gout. It is necessary to minimize the amount of these products which contain many purine bases. These include the following:
- broths made from meat, fish and mushrooms (the purines in them are in an easily digestible form);
- offal lungs and brains, liver and kidneys;
- meat sauces and preserves;
- animal fats;
- vegetable crops from the legume family: beans and peas, beans and lentils, soybeans;
- smoked meats, all types of sausages.
There are some foods that affect the acidity of the body. To avoid a sharp increase in the amount of acid in the tissues, you should also exclude from the diet such foods as:
- spices, mustard, pepper, horseradish;
- vegetable sauces;
- spinach, fresh herbs, sorrel;
- salted fish and various dishes with its contents;
- beverages containing alcohol (in particular wine and beer);
- products containing significant amounts of butter and cocoa;
- salty and spicy cheeses.
It is necessary to limit the patients in the consumption of table salt and fats in order to avoid the accumulation of urate in the tissues.
Under no circumstances should you eat fried gout foods.
List of foods allowed for gout
Purine bases are found in small amounts in milk, Swiss cheese, chicken eggs, bread, caviar, walnuts and hazelnuts. You can eat millet and carrots, pearl barley and buckwheat. During a diet, you can eat a small portion of fish or meat prepared by cooking or boiling once every seven days.
Increasing the amount of fluid you drink will help the patient to get rid of uric acid compounds. In this case, you should use only purified or boiled water.
It is imperative to reduce the nutritional level of foods consumed by patients with gout. With concomitant obesity, in particular. With this disease, you can include small amounts of tomatoes in your diet. From seasonings it is recommended to use only bay leaf for the preparation of diet dishes.
Fruits and vegetables are very useful in case of gout, but only in raw form. Sometimes the patient needs days of fasting. At the same time, it is recommended to drink only fruit and vegetable juices during the day, and the use of ascorbic acid should also be included.
Gout fast
During exacerbations of this unpleasant disease, some patients independently decide on treatment by fasting to cleanse their bodies of excess purines. But, this decision in the diet is totally unwarranted. With this practice, there is a sharp deterioration in the general condition of the patient. During starvation, the food supply in the body stops, making it impossible to meet energy needs, which leads to the consumption of its own reserves. In this case, the most accessible material is the protein compounds. It is for this reason that at the beginning of the fast, the level of uric acid in the blood serum increases rapidly and is deposited in the synovial membrane of diseased joints, as well as in the tissues of the human body. It all ends with an exacerbation of gout.
The following also occurs. The synovium of the joints accumulates significant deposits of acid salts. Along with this process, urates enter the glomeruli of the patient's renal tubules, which contributes to the emergence of an acute form of a disease such as gouty nephropathy.