How drinking water can help you beat gout

Drinking lots of water. When you have a gout attack and am willing to try anything, including amputation, you will willingly chug gallons if it helps even a little. But does it? And why?

DRINK MORE THAN A GALLON A DAY

Drinking water helps during a gout attack for the same reason as it helps to prevent attacks. You do not have to chug a gallon of water as a preventive measure, but you should try to drink at a big glass of water (approximately 300 cc, or one third of a liter) every 20 minutes. This spreads out the consumption and helps your body use the water. Drinking too much water may be bad for you, so try to drink about six liters a day (a gallon is about four liters, so this comes down to one and a half gallon per day).

HELP FLUSH THE KIDNEYS

The water helps against gout in two ways: It helps your kidneys flush out the excess uric acid, and it helps increase the volume of your blood. This may sound drastic but it is actually not a problem since we are only talking about a proportionally small increase, less than 20%. But increasing the volume from 4.5 liters to 5.5 liters (about 1.2 gallons) will decrease the concentration of uric acid in your blood, which means it becomes more difficult for uric acid crystals to form and less probable that you get a gout attack.

LOWER YOUR CONCENTRATION

During the attack it works the same way. Decreasing the concentration of uric acid in your blood means new crystals will not form and more importantly during an attack, the lower concentration means existing crystals will start to dissolve. And the extra water helps fush them out. Rather than being a lod on your kidneys, it helps them if you keep well hydrated. So does keeping your salt intake down. Otherwise, it can help make attacks last longer since you retain water in your body rather than flush it out.