If you suffer with gout and like to have an alcoholic drink from time to time it is vitally important that you are aware of the levels of purines in beer, and how this could have an impact on you if you don’t keep an eye on your intake.
For those who like an alcoholic beverage and either suffer from gout or have been warned to keep an eye on their uric acid levels by a medical professional, a plan of action for your drinking habits is often a wise choice.
Alcohol and Gout
The link between alcohol and the development of gout is well known, with some alcohol particularly high in purines, leading to a greater chance of gout. The types of alcohol with the highest levels of purines are things like beer, stout, port and other darker coloured drinks. Other types of alcohol, such as white wine and lighter spirits, are lower in purines and therefore are usually not considered a direct contributing factor to triggering gout flare-ups.
Purines in Beer and Gout Development
Purines in beer are a real problem for those who like to drink a few pints regularly and if you are worried about your uric acid levels and the potential for gout, you should really cut back on your beer drinking. Even one beer per day will increase the risk levels of gout by as much as 49% with each serving, with this percentage increasing the higher the quantity of beer you drink.
The problem, as with most triggers of gout is often moderation, or the lack of it. For those people who like to drink excessively, or binge drink at the weekends or special occasions, this can often have a severe negative impact on the body’s ability to process and excrete uric acid in your blood stream. The beer is metabolized in your body, into lactic acid, leading to a competition with uric acid for which is going to get through the kidneys and out of the body through your urine.
As we have mentioned above the percentage of risk for gout increases by 49% with even just one serving of beer, but for a serving of harder alcohol, a spirit of some kind such as vodka or whisky, the risk actually only grows by around 15% with each serving. This highlights that it isn’t only the alcoholic content of a beverage that triggers a gout attack, but the non-alcoholic elements such as purines. Purines in beer are a big part of the non-alcoholic make-up and therefore this indicates that they could be the reason that beer is widely accepted as a gout trigger.
Beer and Gout – Plan Carefully
As with the rest of your life and diet, if you are a beer drinker but worried about gout you should be very careful with your consumption habits. Keep it under control and where possible maintain the advised guidelines for the amount you should drink at most per day. An important factor is to stay healthy, maintain a regime of physical fitness and eat a balanced and healthy diet. We all have blow outs of course, with food and beer from time to time, and we wouldn’t want to stop you enjoying yourself. What we would say is use moderation and the purines in beer shouldn’t pose a major problem, however it is very likely it will if gluttony takes over and you drink too much on a regular basis.
If you are worried about the purines in beer triggering gout, or you have suffered a flare up, we would recommend you try to stop drinking beer in the short-term completely and consider trying another alcoholic drink that is lower in purines, or alternatively if you just love a beer try to limit yourself to fewer drinks than you are currently consuming. Alongside this there are some fantastic supplements that you can use, such as Uriciplex. Uriciplex is a side effect free natural remedy that targets the root causes of gout. You can use it alongside your diet and it will help manage gout should you suffer a flare up.
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