To achieve immediate therapeutic effect, people suffering from a disease such as gout, dietitians prescribe special diet foods. From medical practice, there are many cases in which, thanks to a strict diet, if a patient has kidney or joint damage, a positive therapeutic result was achieved. This is explained by the fact that the diet for this disease helps reduce the production of exogenous purines
Compliance with a strict diet for gout affecting the leg joints is not at all determined by strict fasting, neither during your recurring periodic attacks, nor in the period between them. It is necessary to precisely select those food products, the use of which is vital for the patient, which is an important point in the treatment.
People with gout need to eat a specific diet to help stabilize uric acid levels. In any person, during a routine examination, you can accidentally find an increase in the indicators of this parameter. In this case, you need to adhere to the dietary regimen in the diet. This approach to the preparation of the patient's menu leads to a significant decrease in the probability of recurrence of attacks of the disease, allows you to prevent the uncomfortable deposition of purines, that is, a significant amount of their compounds in organs and tissues.
Fundamental principles of nutritional therapy for gout
A patient with gout should eat consistently, dividing the entire daily portion of food into at least 4 meals. This will help stop the process of saturating the 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 adversely affects the joints during movement. But neither should hunger be allowed. The body weight of obese people should be reduced gradually, but not more than 2 kg per month.
Throughout the day, a gout patient needs to consume around 2 liters of water during remission and at least 3 liters when an exacerbation of the disease occurs. It should not be forgotten that the use of mineral water, which contains alkali, favorably promotes the removal of urates from the patient's body.
Prohibited foods for gout
A very important point is to choose the right diet for a gout patient. It is necessary to minimize the quantity of those products that contain numerous 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 brain, liver and kidneys;
- meat-based sauces and canned foods;
- animal fats;
- garden crops of the legume family beans and peas, beans and lentils, soybeans;
- smoked meats, all kinds of sausages.
There are 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-based sauces;
- spinach, fresh herbs, sorrel;
- salted fish and various dishes with their content;
- beverages containing alcohol (especially wine and beer);
- products that contain significant amounts of butter and cocoa;
- salty and spicy cheeses.
It is necessary to restrict patients in the intake of table salt and fats to avoid the accumulation of urate in the tissues.
Under no circumstances should you eat fried food for gout.
List of foods allowed for gout
Purine bases are found in low amounts in milk, Swiss cheese, chicken eggs, bread, caviar, walnuts, and hazelnuts. You can eat millet and carrots, pearl barley and buckwheat. During the diet, you can eat a small portion of baked or boiled fish or meat 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 the food consumed by gout patients. Especially with concomitant obesity. With this disease, you can include small amounts of tomatoes in your diet. Of seasonings, it is recommended to use only bay leaf for the preparation of dietary 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 body of excess purines. But this decision in the diet is completely unjustified. With this practice, there is a strong deterioration in the general condition of the patient. During starvation, the intake of food in the body stops, which makes it impossible to provide energy needs, as a result of which the consumption of its own reserves begins. In this case, the most accessible material is protein compounds. It is for this reason that at the beginning of fasting, the level of uric acid in the blood serum rapidly rises and is deposited on the synovial membrane of diseased joints, as well as on the tissues of the human body. It all ends with an exacerbation of gout.
The following also happens. The synovial membrane of the joints accumulates important deposits of acid salts. Parallel to this process, urates penetrate the glomeruli of the renal tubules of the patient, contributing to the appearance of an acute form of a disease such as gouty nephropathy.