Lay off the goat if you have gout

Advertisement

I hadn't seen my old friend Tim in months, and I was startled by the stiff, pained way he was walking.

"My doctor thinks I have gout," he offered as an explanation.

Gout? I didn't think gout was something a sturdy man in his 30s got in Las Vegas. As far as I knew, gout was something Lord Farthington Pequod Farquar III complained about in a Victorian novel, a few pages before he was discovered face down on the divan in the drawing room with a Malay Kris knife in his back and a small scrap of Egyptian muslin clutched in his left hand.

Sadly, gout is all too common. Once it was thought to be caused by rich food and alcohol, which is why all those literary Lord Farquars ended up with it. These days, we know that while those things exacerbate the condition, the root cause is an increase of uric acid in your blood, which can be caused by a number of things, including your genes, obesity, some ailment that doesn't allow our kidneys to process the uric acid, or eating rich foods or drinking too much alcohol. Well, I'm certainly glad we cleared up that little misconception.

Our city has an abundance of gout because our city has abundance in general. Rich food and alcohol? Wasn't that the city's advertising campaign right before "What happens here, stays here" and right after "Kids gamble free on Thursdays?"

Another contributing factor is the popularity of high-protein, low-carb diets. High on the list of foods that can cause you to have more uric acid are red meat, poultry and fish. On top of that, those diets can release the uric acid stored in your fat into your blood stream, giving you a double dose.

The effects of gout can strike you suddenly. One gets an attack of gout, which is pain, swelling and tenderness in a joint, often the big toe. You've got to respect an ailment that is not only painful but attacks an extremely silly place. If I can just find something that affects the left nostril and belly button, I will have achieved humorous health column nirvana.

The uric acid builds up and crystallizes, creating lots of little sharp things on your joint. "It's sort of like having little glass splinters inside you," explained Tim, "and it's just as much fun as that sounds."

The long list of foods you should avoid during a gout attack range from weird (goat, organ meats, herring and semolina) to the seemingly harmless (asparagus, lentils, oatmeal and aspirin) to the obvious, or "duh" category, (alcohol, cigarettes, fried foods, anchovies, white bread, processed meat, mushrooms and table salt). So much for that drunken pizza party and goat sacrifice you were planning.

The good news is that gout is treatable. You can make changes in your diet, and depending on a number of factors, there are medications available both to alleviate the symptoms and restore the balance of your uric acid, in hopes of allowing it to go where it's supposed to: into your urine.

The only way to be sure if you have gout is have your doctor give you a joint fluid aspiration test, which you should get if you even suspect you have gout. The bad news is that gout is likely to recur once it's started. In the meantime, whether you've got gout or not, it wouldn't hurt to cut back on the red meat, sugar and alcohol. Also, whenever possible, try to avoid goat.

F. Andrew Taylor is a Las Vegas freelance writer. His column appears twice monthly. Contact him at fandrewt@cox.net.