Imagine you have a large bucket filled with water, and you keep adding more water to it. The bucket has limited capacity, so if you keep pouring, the water will eventually overflow, causing problems. Here, the water represents uric acid, and the bucket is your body.
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Now, think of meat-based foods as the source of the water. Eating too much meat (adding too much water) can lead to the accumulation of uric acid (water) in your body, eventually causing gout (overflowing water). But the real issue isn’t the bucket itself; it’s the excessive amount of water being added. Even if you stop adding water, if the bucket is already almost full, the water will still overflow unless something else is done. In other words, while meat can influence uric acid levels, the root cause of gout lies in the accumulation and management of uric acid in the body, not just in eating meat. Therefore, completely avoiding meat (not adding water) might deprive your body of essential nutrients (the normal water level in the bucket), leading to an imbalance (your body losing its equilibrium) and other health problems. So, the key is to control meat intake moderately, rather than avoiding it altogether. This way, you can still enjoy the nutrition from meat without causing the “bucket” to overflow, reducing the risk of gout.
You can think of gout as a “volcanic eruption in the joints.” Imagine your joints as a volcano. It might seem calm at times, but suddenly, it starts erupting, causing intense pain and swelling in the surrounding area. This eruption can happen from time to time, making your joints feel like they’re burning. Other types of arthritis are more like slow-building earthquakes. While they might eventually affect your body, the progression is gradual, and the tremors aren’t as intense as a volcanic eruption. To sum up, gout is characterized by sudden, intense joint pain and swelling, whereas other forms of arthritis develop slowly and worsen over time.
For example, gout often strikes suddenly. You could go to bed feeling fine, but wake up with a big toe swollen like a red carrot, so painful that you can’t even walk.
Why is gout so painful? It’s because of something in the body called uric acid. When there’s too much of it, it forms tiny sharp crystals in the joints, which trigger severe pain and inflammation. These uric acid crystals accumulate in the joints, leading to the extreme pain of gout.
How can we describe this process? Imagine you’re constantly pouring salt into a large tank of water. Initially, the salt dissolves easily, but as you add more and more, the water reaches its saturation point, and salt starts to accumulate at the bottom, no longer dissolving. This is similar to the buildup of uric acid in your body. Normally, uric acid dissolves in the bloodstream, but when the levels get too high, like the salt in the tank, it exceeds the body’s capacity to dissolve it. It then crystallizes in the joints. These uric acid crystals are like sharp needles, irritating the joints and triggering a strong inflammatory response, which causes severe pain.
Generally, uric acid is a byproduct of our body’s metabolism. A level of 6–7 mg/dL is a critical point. When levels exceed this, it indicates high uric acid in the body. When uric acid levels are too high, the excess forms crystals in the joints. These crystals, like needles, pierce the joints, causing intense pain, swelling, and inflammation, which we call gout.
So, where does uric acid come from in the body? There are two sources: external and internal. Most of the uric acid in the body comes from the breakdown of purines, which are produced and stored in the cells of the body.
Imagine your body as a super factory, and each cell is a small workshop in that factory.
The DNA and RNA in our body are like the blueprints for these workshops, detailing how to create various things. These blueprints are made up of two types of small components: purines and pyrimidines. Purines are like the “bricks” used to build these blueprints. They’re very important—without them, the house can’t be built. The cell nucleus is like the safe where these blueprints are stored, and purines live there too. When cells follow the blueprints to make things, they produce some “waste.” These purine “bricks” become uric acid waste after being used. This waste is then eliminated through the body’s “waste disposal system.”
About 80% of the purines in our body are produced by metabolism, and only 20% come from high-purine foods. This 20% is relatively small, which is why controlling uric acid through diet alone usually doesn’t work well.
Uric acid is the final product of purine metabolism. Normally, uric acid breaks down in the blood: one-third is excreted through the intestines, and two-thirds is filtered out by the kidneys through urine.
In normal circumstances, the production and excretion of uric acid remain balanced. The body’s uric acid “pool” doesn’t fill up. However, if too much is produced, or too little is excreted, or both, this will inevitably lead to an increase in uric acid levels.
Lastly, let’s talk about how to deal with high uric acid and gout.
- Supplement with potassium citrate or magnesium citrate. These supplements are alkaline and can neutralize uric acid, effectively treating gout.
- Take vitamin C or drink lemon juice, which also helps neutralize uric acid. I’ll link my video on how vitamin C lowers uric acid at the end of this one.
- Drink apple cider vinegar to help neutralize uric acid.
- If you’ve had kidney stones, which are usually formed from calcium salts (like calcium oxalate), this means your body has high calcium levels, or calcium isn’t being properly directed to the bones, leading to stone formation in the kidneys. In this case, you also need to supplement with vitamin K2, as it helps improve calcium metabolism, guiding calcium from the bloodstream into the bones and reducing calcium deposits in soft tissues like the kidneys.
That’s all for today’s video. I hope this information has been helpful to you. If you like my channel, don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share. See you in the next episode!
