How to avoid the killer drug that causes gout
I decided to take a gamble and test what happens to my uric acid level when I eat a lot of sugar. Since uric acid is a by-product of the breakdown of sugar in the liver, a lot of sugar should increase the uric acid production. Normally my diet contains very little sugar, so giving myself a sugar chock should show how big that effect may be.
Sugar is a major driver for metabolic syndrome, which makes it a major cause of gout.
So I drank a glass of milk (or kids cocoa) with four spoonfuls of sugar dissolved in it at 8 AM, 10 AM, 12 noon, 2 PM, and 5 PM. My aric acid serum level (a measure of how much uric acid there is in your blood) was 4.5 mg/dL in the morning. The day after, when my liver had plenty of time to produce glucose from all that sugar, and uric acid as a byproduct, was 7.3 mg/dL. This rise is almost like having a high-purine meal.
So sugar is bad news if you have gout. Your body uses glucose as fuel, but first the different sugars have to be converted to glucose in the liver. The more complex the sugar, the more energy the conversion itself uses. But if you eat a low-purine diet (as I do) it takes a lot to trigger additional uric acid production by eating additional sugar. The enzymes your body produces at base level is sufficient to handle quite a lot of additional sugar (at least it was for me). But if your diet is full of sugar every day, it may be different (my diet is close to sugar-free as well as purine-free).
BREAKING THE SHELLS CAUSES GOUT
This is quite aligned with gout being a product of hyperuricemia, which in turn is a product of metabolic syndrome.
Here is how it works: If you are hyperuricemic (which is a fancy word for having too much uric acid), your body stores the excess uric acid in cartilage and ligaments (the uric acid crystals, which form when the concentration in your blood is approx 6.8 mg/dL, are encased in thin protein shells so they will not chafe).
When something happens that break the shell, such as a fall or rise in blood pressure, a change in the concentration of uric acid (can be caused by dehydration), or a bump that shakes lose the crystals from the shell, then the crystals are released into your joint fluid and start to chafe. This triggers an inflammation that causes the pain (since the blood vessels expand and put pressure on the nerves.
Here is how it works: If you are hyperuricemic (which is a fancy word for having too much uric acid), your body stores the excess uric acid in cartilage and ligaments (the uric acid crystals, which form when the concentration in your blood is approx 6.8 mg/dL, are encased in thin protein shells so they will not chafe).
When something happens that break the shell, such as a fall or rise in blood pressure, a change in the concentration of uric acid (can be caused by dehydration), or a bump that shakes lose the crystals from the shell, then the crystals are released into your joint fluid and start to chafe. This triggers an inflammation that causes the pain (since the blood vessels expand and put pressure on the nerves.
Your body produces excess uric acid since you are producing too much glucose. Uric acid is a byproduct of glucose production and if your glucose production is on overdrive, so is your production of uric acid. Normally, if you are not hyperuricemic, you will not use all the sugar in the food, and the purines in your food will represent about 30 % of the purines you use. But not when you have hyperuricemia. Then, your liver will grab all possible purines since it needs to use them to produce glucose.
SUGAR GENERATES GOUT
The sugars are taken up in the upper intestine, where the food you have eaten is brought into contact with the walls of the intestine, which contains specialized cells that absorb nutrients from the mass that your food has become, and let them into the blood stream. From there, they are transported to the liver.
When the liver has broken down the sugars to glucose (using purines and creating uric acid in the process), it sends the glucose into the bloodstream, where iit will be picked up by the cells and turned into energy - or stored.
The resulting uric acid us also let out into the blood stream, like all other waste products. It is then picked up by the kidneys when the blood passes through them, and execreted through the urine. If there is too much uric acid, it can not be excecreted and will be stored as monosodium urate crystals.
The more sugar you have in your body, the more need for purines to be turned into the enzymes that are needed for the conversion of complex sugars to glucose. So simply put, sugar promotes the creation of uric acid.
When the liver has broken down the sugars to glucose (using purines and creating uric acid in the process), it sends the glucose into the bloodstream, where iit will be picked up by the cells and turned into energy - or stored.
The resulting uric acid us also let out into the blood stream, like all other waste products. It is then picked up by the kidneys when the blood passes through them, and execreted through the urine. If there is too much uric acid, it can not be excecreted and will be stored as monosodium urate crystals.
The more sugar you have in your body, the more need for purines to be turned into the enzymes that are needed for the conversion of complex sugars to glucose. So simply put, sugar promotes the creation of uric acid.
Sugar is bad news if you have gout, but good news if you are six years old.
The driver behind cells taking up glucose is insulin, the same hormone that diabetics lack in sufficient amounts. Or have enough of, but the cells in the body do not react properly to it. They have become insuline resistant. A very common, and often invisible, complication of obesity is insuline resistance and pre-diabetes. Make sure to check that you are not becoming insuline resistant. That means your body is producing insuline as it should, but the cells can not react to it. Being fat is dangerous.
If you have high uric acid, chances are you are developing diabetes. Pre-diabetes is a common complication of metabolic syndrome, which in primciple means you are fat. Like me (I am officially diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, and I am trying to fix that). And there is a known correlation between high uric acid and diabetes. The longer you have high uric acid, the higher the risk of diabetes. But one does not cause the other.
URIC ACID IS A BYPRODUCT
Glucose is the simplest sugar, and you can think of it as building blocks for other sugars. Fructose consists of two glucose molecules linked together, but a complex sugar like starch consists of tens of glucose molecules. Dietary fibers and cellulose are technically speaking also sugars, but they are so complex that your body can not use them to create energy, since breaking them down would take more energy than you can get from the constitutient glucose molecules. All other sugars can be broken down into glucose, they can be consumed quickly as well. Glucose is like gasoline for your body. It burns fast and releases a lotnof energy, but it has byproducts as well. One of those is uric acid.
The faster the sugar gets released into the blood, the faster it becomes uric acid.
Fat, on the other hand, burns much more slowly and for a longer time. Burning fat does not create uric acid in the same way as burning sugar (although it does create some).
The easier it is to get the sugar out of the food, the faster it gets from the intestines into the blood. Sugar from food without dietary fibers are absorbed into the bloodstream much faster than sugar from food with dietary fibers. Juice is fruit with the dietary fibers removed, and the sugars in juice are taken up much faster than the sugar from an orange eaten as a fruit. Add to that the fact that it takes a lot more energy to peel an orange than to pour juice from a jug, and you start understanding
The faster the sugar gets released into the blood, the faster it becomes uric acid.
Fat, on the other hand, burns much more slowly and for a longer time. Burning fat does not create uric acid in the same way as burning sugar (although it does create some).
The easier it is to get the sugar out of the food, the faster it gets from the intestines into the blood. Sugar from food without dietary fibers are absorbed into the bloodstream much faster than sugar from food with dietary fibers. Juice is fruit with the dietary fibers removed, and the sugars in juice are taken up much faster than the sugar from an orange eaten as a fruit. Add to that the fact that it takes a lot more energy to peel an orange than to pour juice from a jug, and you start understanding
KETO CREATES NO UA
There is an alternative to using sugar for energy, and that is using fat. When you burn fat, you generate a type of energy molecules called ketones. Those ketones are as energy-rich as sugar, but the process of generating them is different - it is called ketosis.
In keto diets, the amount of purines in the food is much higher than on a vegetable diet. An all-dairy and egg keto diet would be purine-free, which would promote weight loss at the same time as it would have all the benefits of a meat-based keto diet.
Body fat is usually created by fat in the food being absorbed into fat cells, but glucose can also be turned into fat.
It takes more energy for the body to release fat and use it as energy than it does using glucose, so normally the body leaves the fat where it is, or adds to it for lean times. On a keto diet, the fat is burned instead of the glucose, as keto diets do not contain any (or very little) carbohydrates.
In keto diets, the amount of purines in the food is much higher than on a vegetable diet. An all-dairy and egg keto diet would be purine-free, which would promote weight loss at the same time as it would have all the benefits of a meat-based keto diet.
Body fat is usually created by fat in the food being absorbed into fat cells, but glucose can also be turned into fat.
It takes more energy for the body to release fat and use it as energy than it does using glucose, so normally the body leaves the fat where it is, or adds to it for lean times. On a keto diet, the fat is burned instead of the glucose, as keto diets do not contain any (or very little) carbohydrates.
BEYOND WHITE POWDER
Most of us are used to think sbout sugar as a white powder, and that is how you usually get it. But sugar pressed from a sugar cane is a sweetish liquid, and only becomes sugar when you boil away the water. Sugar from sugar beets is also yellowish, but recognizably sugar. That is not true of many natural sweeteners, such as maple syrup, agave syrup and honey, which contain a lot more glucose than table sugar (which is sucrose, an even more complex sugar). And then there is High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFC) which often is one of the main ingredients in soft drinks. It is made by chemically processing the starch from corn.
This means you can get sugar in many different forms, but all of them will be broken down into glucose in the body, producing uric acid in the process.
This means you can get sugar in many different forms, but all of them will be broken down into glucose in the body, producing uric acid in the process.
WATCH OUT FOR ADDICTION
Sugar addiction is a well established medical fact. It does not make you dependent in the same way as drug addiction, but even if it is an addiction you can break, it is as hard to break as alcoholism. To get rid of it, you have to recognize the dependency and realize how easy it is to fall back into it - even easier than alcoholism, because sugar is in so many things around us.
That is not the only problem with sugar. Throughout history sugar has been the fuel of slavery, the source of annexation of at least two independent countries, and the European agrichemical industry. Today there are sugars in almost any manufactured food, if not from sugar canes or sugar beets, then from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Turning the sugar in corn to fructose is a fairly simple chemical process, but makes the soft drinks which contains it more addictive than they would be otherwise. And arguably tastier.
If you are diabetic, or know someone who is, you know the importance of managing your blood sugar, since it can kill you. But here is the bad news: Sugar can kill you even if you are not diabetic. Killing you slowly. And give you gout even faster.
That is not the only problem with sugar. Throughout history sugar has been the fuel of slavery, the source of annexation of at least two independent countries, and the European agrichemical industry. Today there are sugars in almost any manufactured food, if not from sugar canes or sugar beets, then from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Turning the sugar in corn to fructose is a fairly simple chemical process, but makes the soft drinks which contains it more addictive than they would be otherwise. And arguably tastier.
If you are diabetic, or know someone who is, you know the importance of managing your blood sugar, since it can kill you. But here is the bad news: Sugar can kill you even if you are not diabetic. Killing you slowly. And give you gout even faster.