Your Heart And Gout

Your heart is the most important organ in your body, possibly with the exception of the brain. And while you have two eyes, two kidneys, and two lungs, you only have one heart. And it does not grow back if it is damaged, like the liver does. So you had better take good care of it and make sure it is working well, because a heart that works as it should will prevent gout attacks.

Child making heart sign by holding both hands together.

Take good care of your heart!

The reason a well functioning and strong heart will protect you against gout attacks is that if it works well, it will pump blood all around the body. If the heart has to work too hard and there are constraints in the way that blood can flow through your body, then the blood that gets to the feet will not be as oxygen-rich and warm as it would if the heart was pumping properly. Varicose veins is a sigh that your heart has to work too heard to drive the blood down to your feet, so hard that the walls of the veins buckle under the pressure.

KIDNEYS MISS URIC ACID

If oxygen-rich blood does not reach your feet, and that blood also is a little cooler than the blood in the rest of the body, those are the conditions which will promote the growth of uric acid crystals in your feet and lead to gout attacks in your big toes. This is one way heart problems are related to gout. Another way is through your kidneys. Kidneys filter out contaminants from the blood and expel them through the urine. If blood flow is too strong (high blood pressure) the delicate capillaries in the kidneys where the contaminants are captured may be damaged, in the same way as varicose veins in your legs. If the kidneys are damaged, they will not be able to filter out the contaminants - and one of them is uric acid. So the amount of uric acid left in the blood will increase, and you will get gout.

FROM HYPERURICEMIA TO HYPERTENSION

Uric acid may not only have effect on your joints and cause painful attacks and flare-ups. But there is also research which points to uric acid having an effect in regulating blood pressure. That would make sense, since uric acid is a by-product of the glucose production in the liver, and a higher blood pressure when the glucose needs to be distributed quickly to all the cells in the body would be useful.
When meals were few and far between, uric acid levels would quickly go down again when the source of the glucose was depleted. But if you keep adding sources of glucose through soft drinks or sweets, the uric acid level never goes down. You are hyperuricemic - and your heart reacts by pumping like your life depended on it, giving you high blood pressure.

EXQUISITE BALANCE

Of course, hyperuricemia and hypertension are connected in a rather more complicated way. The body is an exquisitely balanced chemical machine, the different oxidants and antioxidants interacting with each other and the vitamins, minerals, and hormones which run through the blood stream. But you get the idea: Hyperuricemia sufferers - most people with gout - are at high risk of hypertension too.