Gout And Exercise Some Surprising News

                

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One of the best ways to prevent kidney stones and the recurrence of gout is to exercise. Aside from helping you stay in shape and maintaining a healthy body weight, exercise provides your body with many benefits, some of which include:

- Strengthening, building and maintaining healthy bones, muscles and joints
- Improve mobility and flexibility
- Improves circulation
- Reduces the risk of heart disease and premature death
- Reduces the risk of cancer
- Reduces the risk of developing diabetes
- Reduces the risk of high cholesterol and lowers high cholesterol
- Reduces stress and improves your mental state of mind
- Gives you more energy

All of the exercise benefits listed above help to prevent the recurrence of gout. This is because regular exercise combined with a healthy controlled diet, helps to lower and control uric acid levels. Thus, engaging in regular exercise is particularly important for those who are overweight or obese, as both of these conditions can cause high uric acid levels. That being said, one should not engage in rapid weight loss by overexercising or taking part in crash diets. Losing weight too quickly can have the reverse affect and actually cause the uric acid levels in the blood to rise.

In addition, it is imperative that you learn how to do exercises correctly. The last thing you want is to injure your joints or cause inflammation as a result of excessive exercise or improper movements. Your goal when exercising is to protect your joints at all time.

Exercises for gout ? The following are exercises that are particularly helpful in preventing gout. Note: Always remember to consult your doctor before starting an exercise regimen.

- Range of motion exercises ? This type of exercise is designed to keep your joints flexible and mobile and reduce stiffness. An example, involving your foot, would be rotating your ankle in a circular motion.

- Strengthening exercises ? These exercises are designed to increase and/or maintain the strength of your muscles. Strengthening exercises are usually performed using weights. However, they can also include resistance exercises such as holding a giant rubber band in your hands and stretching it. This type of exercise helps to build muscles.

- Endurance exercises ? These exercises are designed to strengthen your heart, increase circulation, boost your energy and control weight. Exercises include aerobics, walking, cycling, swimming, etc

- Stretching exercises ? Stretching exercises help to increase flexibility and muscle strength. Good exercises including yoga, pilaties and tai chi. However, it is important that you engage in moderate stretching exercises, especially in the beginning, so you don?t risk pulling, twisting or injuring a joint. You should receive proper instructions before doing any of these exercises on your own.

Important information about exercise and gout - Although exercise is ideal for gout sufferers, it is imperative that one knows when it is best to exercise and when it is not. It is also important that one understands what exercise can and can?t do for gout.

First of all, you should never exercise a joint that is inflamed, regardless if the inflammation has been caused by gout or not. Exercising an inflamed joint can worsen the condition by causing more pain and prolonging inflammation. Only begin exercise after the inflammation has eased and take it slow.

When a joint is inflamed you need to focus on easing the inflammation by ensuring the joint is well rested and relaxed. You can also treat the inflammation by applying warm and cool compresses, or with anti-inflammatory medications. Talk to your doctor about the best treatment during this time.

In addition, exercise has no effect on breaking up uric acid crystals, stones or tophi. Exercise helps to control uric acid levels and prevent gout; it can?t do much during a gout attack.

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Prevent And Treat Gout Symptom Complications

                

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Gout is a form or arthritis, which can attack very suddenly. When a gout attack occurs the inflamed joint becomes very red, swollen and painful. To treat gout symptom issues there are a number of steps that you can take which are effective.

Firstly, you need to have the gout diagnosed. It is important to know that the pain and swelling you are experiencing is indeed gout and not another form of arthritis or infection.

The procedure to check if you have gout is straightforward, and involves a medical professional taking a sample of fluid from the effected joint and checking for uric acid crystals.

Once you have the gout diagnosis confirmed by a medical professional you could start to consider ways to treat the condition.

Many doctors will recommend one of the following medication options:

NSAIDS will often be prescribed to reduce the pain. It is a group of anti-inflammatory medications that helps to reduce inflammation, swelling and pain.

The other options are medications that focus on preventing rather than treating the symptoms. These medications, such as allopurinal and probenecid, target the production and removal of uric acid from the body.

If using drugs to manage your gout does not appeal to you due to the potential side effects, then you can adopt a gout-friendly diet that limits foods with high levels of purine.

Consuming too much purine is one of the most common reason for developing gout. As purine is a compound found in much of our food and in our tissues in or body, and when it is broken down and metabolized, it produces uric acid.

It is excess uric acid that causes gout symptoms, as rather than being eliminated as waste via the kidneys, the extra uric acid stays in the bloodstream. This results in a build up of uric acid crystals in the spaces between the joints, usually in the foot and big toe joints. It is these sharp crystals which cause the painful inflammation and redness.

Foods with very high purine levels such as offal, meats, gravies, shellfish and dried legumes should be avoided. Try replacing them with gout-friendly foods such as cereal based food, corn, eggs, dairy products and fruit.

If you're a gout sufferer and overweight, now is the time to really get serious about losing those extra pounds. Being overweight can add to gout complications as carrying excess weight impacts on the kidneys ability to process the increased levels of uric acid.

Drinking sufficient liquids is also vital for optimum liver function. You need to be drinking 6 - 8 eight-ounce glasses of preferably water a day. Or if you do not like to drink water, tea and fruit juices are okay to include in your quota. Staying hydrated is important and means that your urine is diluted, allowing your kidneys to expel the extra uric acid.

When suffering from gout it's also worth limiting your alcohol intake, particularly beer as it contains high purine levels. And, it is worth noting that any alcohol will impair the ability of the body to process and remove excess uric acid.

These tips should be able to see how to prevent and treat gout symptom complications. For more information on all aspects of gout please visit our site.

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Gout. A disease of indulgence

                

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Gout develops when the level of uric acid in the blood is too high. In the past it was known as the patrician's malady because it was considered a diseased of over indulgence amongst the wealthy. High purine diet can affect gout and red meat is high in purine. The rich ate red meat while the poor could only afford grain.

Gout is predominantly a male disease up to the age of 50. It starts around 30 and the peak is between 40 and 50 years. It is rare in pre-menopausal women. Hippocrates wrote about gout as a disease of males and post-menopausal women and urate crystals were found in the big toe of an Egyptian mummy.

Gout can be classified as primary and secondary. In primary gout the body either produces too much uric acid or it cannot excrete it effectively to maintain a normal blood level. These patients benefit significantly from dietary changes. Secondary gout develops as a result of other factors. Some medical conditions can raise uric acid level and trigger gout. These include renal disease and myeloproliferative disorders. In leukaemia, the imbalance is due to excessive production of uric acid, and in renal disease the excretion of uric acid is impeded. Drugs can affect blood uric acid levels. These include diuretics especially thiazide diuretics, aspirin and cytotoxic drugs. Gout is also linked to obesity and alcohol.

Acute gout usually develops during the night. 70-90% of acute gout develops in the big toe and typically affects the first metatarso-phalangeal joint. This is called podagra. Within hours the pain becomes severe and throbbing. The big toe swells up and can feel hot. It is extremely painful to the touch and even the touch of the bed sheath can induce excruciating pain. The acute episode resolves on its own but can take over a week. Medication can shorten this time.

Since the introduction in 1951 of probenacid and allopurinol in 1963, chronic gout is rare apart from non-compliant sufferers. Before these drugs were introduced chronic gout caused severe distress amongst sufferers. Acute gout was frequent and severe. In addition urate crystals separated out into other joints, kidneys and other organs leading to polyarthritis, kidney stones, heart disease and tophi.

Diet and weight loss has an important role in gout management. A low intake of purine can reduce blood urate level by up to 20%. Foods high in purine are meat especially liver and other organ meat, sausages and other processed meat, seafood, milk, eggs and certain beans. Alcohol increases the possibility of gout. Beer is the worse culprit. It contains guanosine. This chemical is converted by the gut flora into uric acid.

Today, with screening and tests done for insurance purpose, we are seeing a group of individuals with high uric acid without any signs of gout. These people need to be monitored. Once all potential factors that can influence gout are eliminated or reduced and diet and weight loss in place, if the uric acid level remains high, then maintenance therapy in the form of allopurinol is recommended to keep the blood uric acid level within the normal range. This stops urate crystals separating out into important parts of the body.


Dr.Phil Hariram is retired General Practitioner. He has treated gout and arthritis for 27 years. http://www.arthritissage.com http://www.arthritissage.com/blog

Natural Ways Of Gout Cure

                

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Gout is a condition characterized by severe attacks of inflammation in single joints, which come on suddenly (acutely) and rapidly reach a peak of extremely severe pain and then subside. Characteristically, a further attack occurs after a variable period, usually of months or years, usually affecting a different joint, particularly of the lower limb. If gout is not treated, the periods between the attacks become shorter and last longer as the years go by. This will cause the condition to worsen and affect other joints of your body. There are a lot of methods that you can use to cure gout, including using natural remedies.

One of the effective ways to cure gout is by using cherries or cheery juice. Cherries are known for their anti-inflammatory properties may help reduce the amount of uric acid in the body and keep it from settling into joints which will cause the pain of gout. You can use canned cherries or fresh cherries and it does not matter if you use sour or sweet cherries. All cherries have been reported to be a natural gout cure. The recommended amount of cherries to consume a day is between ten cherries and up to one half pound. There are others who prefer to use cherry juice concentrate (1 tablespoon per day) and it is also effective in curing gout.

Diet is important and can be used as a natural gout cure as well. Purines consumed in the diet account for about 50% of the uric acid produced in the body. Therefore, a low purine or modified purine diet may help gout improve and prevent future gout attacks. A low purine diet consists of eliminating the following high purine foods from the diet: organ meats, sweetbreads, brains, kidney, meat gravies, meat extracts, scallops, wild game, mackerel, herring, anchovies and sardines. In addition, only one serving of the following foods are allowed per day in a low purine diet: dried beans and peas, asparagus, cauliflower, spinach, mushrooms, poultry, meat or fish.

Apart from this, you can also consider a purine-modified diet, which consists of eliminating extremely high-purine foods such as liver, brains, kidney and other organ meats as well as sweetbreads. However, in a purine-modified diet, it is alright for some protein foods not to exceed 100 grams per day. In one ounce of meat, there are 7 grams of protein Bread and grains have about 3 grams of protein per serving. One serving is one slice of bread or ? cup of grain. Protein can be obtained by eating milk, eggs and cheese because these foods are high in protein and low in purines.

Another natural gout cure is increasing the intake of water, which can help to flush out excess uric acid and help prevent kidney stones. As a guideline, it is recommended that you drink at least eight glasses of water or three litres a day. Gout sufferers should also avoid alcohol because it increases uric acid production and inhibits its secretion.

Although it is important to reduce your weight to prevent gout, you should avoid fad diets such as fasting because quick weight loss causes a release of uric acid by the cells as they break down. Instead, you should try a diet that encourages slow and steady weight loss.

Another natural gout cure is charcoal poultice. To make charcoal poultice, mix one half cup activated powdered charcoal with a few tablespoons flaxseed that has been ground in a blender until it becomes meal. Then add enough warm water to create a paste. Put paste on affected joint and cover with cloth or plastic. The dressing should be changed every four hours or it may be left on over night. Be sure to avoid getting the charcoal poultice on clothing or bed linens because it will stain.

A charcoal bath can also be used as a natural gout cure. Using an old basin that you don't mind staining, mix one half cup of charcoal powder with water until a paste is made. Place affected foot into the basin and add water until the foot is covered. You should soak your foot in the charcoal bath for thirty to sixty minutes.

For more information on the different kinds of Gout Causes, Gout Natural Remedy or Gout Natural Cure, please visit the following website: Gout Natural Remedies & Treatment

Skyjoe is a well-known author, website publisher and owner of www.mygeneralknowledge.com. ?Skyjoe. All rights reserved. This article may be freely distributed as long as it remains unaltered inclusive of the active links and the copyright notice. No alteration is allowed without express written permission from the author.