Why a gout pill could cut high blood pressure and boost your sex life trends now
Too much uric acid is well known to cause gout — painful inflammation in the joints, usually the big toe.
Many foods can push up uric acid levels, including seafood, red meat and beer, and people suffering with gout are advised to avoid them.
But uric acid is also linked with weight gain, high blood pressure, insulin resistance (a precursor to type 2 diabetes) and chronic inflammation, according to a new book by a U.S. neurologist and expert on nutritional approaches to disease.
The implication is that this understanding could provide new ways for tackling some of our biggest killers — such as heart disease, stroke and dementia.
Indeed, far from being a minor player in our metabolic health, uric acid may be more like a conductor, suggests the book’s author, Dr David Perlmutter, an associate professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
Too much uric acid is well known to cause gout — painful inflammation in the joints, usually the big toe
In the course of his research, Dr Perlmutter says he ‘kept coming across studies showing that too much uric acid was not only bad for the brain, but could harm your health in multiple ways’.
Many of the foods linked with uric acid production are rich in purines. Another source of uric acid is when the sugar fructose is broken down in the body.
Fructose that comes naturally from the fruit and vegetables in our diet isn’t a problem, says Dr Perlmutter, because ‘that fructose comes combined with fibre, which is great for feeding your gut bacteria and a range of beneficial vitamins and minerals’.
But fructose isn’t so beneficial when it comes in the form of table sugar — standard sugar is made up of a 50:50 combination of fructose and glucose. ‘And the fructose portion triggers the uric acid rise and the knock-on effects,’ explains Dr Perlmutter.
There is also fructose in the form of high fructose corn syrup, which is added to manufactured food, such as cakes, biscuits and pizzas, particularly in the U.S.
Many foods can push up uric acid levels, including seafood, red meat and beer, and people suffering with gout are advised to avoid them
Dr Perlmutter says it’s not just people with gout who have raised uric acid levels — so do patients with other chronic disorders, such as obesity, heart disease and type
