Why Milk Flushes Out Uric Acid

Two children enjoying a portion of yoghurt with a funny face drawn on it in fruit sauce.

Milk or yoghurt flush out uric acid from the body.

When you have gout, the attacks come because you have a buildup of uric acid crystals in your tissues (usually the connective tissue). Apart from taking steps to lower the intake of purines - which turn to uric acid - and the uric acid production in your body, you can do one more thing to decrease the risk of a gout attack and to increase your chances of not having one: Flushing out the uric acid in your body.

OROTIC ACID IN CHEESE BYPRODUCTS

The best way to flush out uric acid is to drink milk. Yes, good old cows milk. Skim milk is preferrable to whole milk, as the active ingredient is orotic acid, which binds to the uric acid and helps flushing it out from your body. And orotic acid is more water soluble than soluble in fat.
This means there is less orotic acid in cheese than in the whey, which is a biproduct of the cheese production. It also means there is orotic acid in the most common protein powders.

MILK HAS SUGAR

Milk is a water emulsion of fat, protein, and sugar. When you talk about the nutritional content of milk, you usually talk about the fat (which becomes butter) and the proteins (which becomes cheese). You do not talk about the sugars. A big glass of milk has almost as much sugar as a fruit (a sweet fruit, like a banana). But while the fruit contains fructose, the milk contains lactose.

ALLERGIC TO SUGAR

Fructose is quickly turned to glucose in the liver (and there, the glucose is turned to uric acid, which is bad news for gout sufferers). Lactose is also turned to glucose, but many people lack the enzyme to do it. Everyone has it as babies, but it disappears in adults, unless you have Scandinavian, Swiss, or Masai genes.
If you lack the enzyme to turn lactose to glucose, you are lactose intolerant and fresh milk will give you an upset stomach. But bacteria like those in yoghurt or kefir cultures break down the sugar, making the cultured milk easy to drink even for those with lactose intolerance.

SUPPLEMENTS TO THE RESCUE

If you are still worried about the sugar content of milk, or about the fat, there is a simple solution. The ingredient in milk which binds to the uric acid is called orotic acid, and it is available as supplements. It is also a part of whey-based protein supplements, but it has been purified in the supplements to give higher effect. Taking orotic acid lowers the concentration of uric acid by binding to it in the blood so it becomes easier for the kidneys to flush out, not by lowering the production like allopurin does.
But while it helps keeping your uric acid levels down to take one a day, the real effect comes when you take orotic acid supplements during a gout flare-up or gout attack. Then, as you do everything else you can to lower the concentration of uric acid in your blood, taking orotic acid will flush it out faster. As the crystals dissolve you shorten the attack using orotic acid.

You can get orotic acid from a number of online merchants, but I got my orotic acid at a very reasonable price from Bulk Supplements (affiliate link). They were very fast and the customer service was excellent.

Never believe medical advice from a software engineer. Always read the disclaimer and talk to your doctor. Links on this site may be affiliate links, which helps me keep it available since I get a small amount when you buy anything, and provides you with great products. Please note that advertisements are not automatically endorsed. Only when I explicitly say so.
If you want to know more about what you can do about your gout and how to make sure you never have a flareup again, try reading my little book "Gout Simply Explained" which chronicles the research I did and what I found out. It is quite simple, really.