The Best GOUT Diet

If you suffer from gout, you have probably received an earful of dietary advice for preventing and treating it, especially the recommendation to eat only low-purine foods.

But JAMA Internal Medicine has now published a study that reveals the four most powerful general diets to tackle gout.

One of those is a clear winner!

And then there is the absolute worst diet for gout: this one worsens gout by almost 50%.

The researchers set out to investigate which common healthy dietary patterns were best for preventing gout. They also examined how the typical Western diet compares with healthy eating patterns.

They studied five diets: the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), the AHEI diet (Alternative Healthy Eating Index), the Alternate Mediterranean Diet Score, the Prudent diet, and an unhealthy Western diet.

They obtained information on 80,039 US women from the Nurses’ Health Study, who were all free of gout at the beginning of the study in 1984.

The information they collected included regular food frequency questionnaires to record the women’s diets, along with extremely detailed medical data, including physician-diagnosed gout and other diseases.

During the 34-year observation period, 3,890 of the women developed gout, with all four of the healthy diets doing a good job at preventing it.

When they compared the people who were most adherent to the people who were least adherent to each of the diets, they reached some impressive conclusions:

1. DASH lowered gout risk by 32%.
2. Prudent lowered it by 25%.
3. AHEI lowered it by 21%.
4. The Mediterranean diet lowered it by 12%.
5. The Western diet increased it by 49%.

This obviously shows that the four healthy dietary patterns work to reduce gout risk, while the typical Western diet increases gout risk by a lot.

Since the DASH and Prudent diets seem to be most effective, let’s look at what they include and exclude.

Both of these diets were formulated specifically to prevent cardiovascular disease.

Both of them encourage the intake of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, fish, and low-fat dairy products.

The biggest differences between them and the Mediterranean diet is that the Mediterranean diet does not limit fat intake or promote calorie restriction, while the DASH and Prudent explicitly do. The Mediterranean diet also allows a lot of cheese and yogurt, while Dash and Prudent limit them a bit.

In other words, if you currently follow the Mediterranean diet, you will probably consume more dairy, daily calories, and more fat than DASH and Prudent allow, but if the study is right, this might actually be a great strategy for preventing gout.

All four of these healthy diets prohibit things like refined carbohydrates (white bread, cookies, crackers) and sugary treats (candy, sugary cereals, sodas), and they all discourage the consumption of too much red meat.

Considering that all of these foods are extremely popular and widespread in the Western diet, it should be no surprise that it is a serious gout risk.

So these diets help to prevent or maybe manage gout. But if you want to completely reverse your gout, you’ll need to apply the simple steps explained here…