What dietary taboos should you pay attention to regarding uric acid?

The core dietary taboos for people with high uric acid are to control the total daily purine intake and actively avoid foods that inhibit the excretion of uric acid. This is far more scientific and better to implement than the crude taboo of "no seafood and beer" posted online.

I have controlled uric acid myself for more than three years, and I have been in contact with hundreds of fellow patients. The most common example I have seen is Uncle Zhang in the community. He doesn’t even touch barbecue and beer. I heard people say that Laohuo soup nourishes the body. Before every meal, I drink two large bowls of pork ribs, corn soup, and miscellaneous bacteria. Soup, the result was that the uric acid level soared from 480 to 620 in less than half a year. In the depth of winter, I had a gout attack and could not get out of bed. Only when I went to the hospital did I find out that the purine dissolution rate in the thick soup that had been simmered for more than an hour could reach 70%. Drinking a bowl of soup has higher purine content than eating three or two pieces of ribs.

Many people are still wondering whether they can eat high-purine spinach, asparagus, and soy products. In fact, the academic community has always had different opinions. The dietary guidelines in previous years also recommended strict restrictions on such plant-based high-purine foods. In the past two years, new research has shown that the human body absorption rate of plant-based purine is nearly 40% lower than that of animal-based purine. If you don't eat more than a pound of asparagus every day and drink a liter of thick soy milk every day, it will basically not cause too much burden on uric acid. On the contrary, the dietary fiber in vegetables can also help metabolize uric acid. If you are really unsure, you can test your uric acid before eating and again two hours after eating. Individual responses are much more reliable than unified standards.

There is another hidden pit that many people don’t know. It is more likely to induce gout than high-purine foods. Foods with high fructose content, such as iced cola, full-sugar milk tea, and even freshly squeezed fruit juices, contain fructose syrup and free fructose that inhibit the excretion of uric acid by the renal tubules. I encountered this a while ago. A 19-year-old boy who usually doesn’t smoke, drink or eat seafood. He just drinks two cups of iced milk tea every day in the summer. When school started, his feet were so swollen that he couldn’t put on his sneakers. When he used crutches to check his uric acid level, it was almost 700. He was confused and said that he had never touched the “gout package” that everyone talked about.

In fact, there is no need to control your diet like an ascetic. I was greedy last month and ate half a kilogram of steamed crayfish. I ate stir-fried vegetables and multigrain rice for the other two meals that day. The total purine level was not exceeded, and there was no fluctuation in the uric acid test. If you really can't eat anything, you will easily break the pot. As long as you have a general idea, don't overeat high-purine foods, and avoid overly sweet drinks, most of them can stabilize uric acid.