Can Fasting Cause Gout?
A popular diet fad that has been around for a few years is the fasting diet where you basically don’t eat anything in order to detox your body or people do it for religious reasons like Muslims during Ramadan. Believe it or not there is a small study that studied the impact of Ramadan fast on patients with gout. Fasting diets aren’t all the same, some allow only liquids like water, teas or juice. Others cut your calories sharply by limiting your daily food intake and some other diets let you fast every other day, what we call intermittent fasting. One thing is for sure. Fasting or a starvation diet won’t cure or help your gout!
Problem is if use any of these fasting diets to lose weight, you’ll quickly notice that you will gain the weight back real quick. If you partake of this diet to detox your body, please note that your body naturally detoxes itself. So let’s just say I am not a big fan of this diet and there are plenty of studies that prove it. Many studies indicate how once you start eating again, you will overcompensate and gain the weight all back.
Fasting a few days won’t hurt most people as long as you stay well hydrated but fasting for a long period of time is bad for you and can be dangerous. Your body needs vitamins, minerals and other nutrients in order to stay healthy. If you don’t get your nutrients you can get symptoms like fatigue, dizziness, constipation and spike your uric acid levels in the blood potentially causing a gout attack. Fasting has also shown to spike blood sugar levels in diabetics as well. That is why doctors recommend that nobody fasts who suffers from a chronic disease, even for a short period of time. Gout is a chronic disease.
What happens to your body once you fast is or partake in a starvation diet is that your body will break down muscle to utilize as fuel since you are not feeding it food. Two substances are then produced from this muscle breakdown, ketone bodies and lactic acid which both impair your kidney’s ability to excrete uric acid and then leads to rising uric acid levels and a possible gout attack. If you dehydrate yourself as well, this will worsen your situation even more.
In conclusion, best to avoid this diet entirely and focus on eating healthy every day like I’ve stated over and over. Eat 80% of your daily calories as vegetables, legumes, fruits, whole grain breads, pastas and rice. Eat 10% of your daily calories as protein like lean red meat, lean chicken and fish. Eat 10% of your daily calories as fat like cheese, yogurt, eggs, butter etc… Don’t forget to drink plenty of water and believe me that in a few weeks you will have shaved off some pounds but most importantly you will have lost these pounds naturally and gradually, not affecting your uric acid levels and risking another gout attack.
16 replies to "Gout and Fasting"
I do not agree that lean meat can reduce gout. I have been suffering from gout since 2016 . I adopted intermittent fasting of about 15 hours, pure vegan diet and occasional fish and plenty of lemon water to reduce gout flare. Still it happens but once in two years. Which I believe is ok as I do not take any medicines.
Actually you are doing it correctly as your body readjusts if you get a gout attack after you do a fast.
Part of cleansing out the remnants uric acid crystals lingering in your joints from years accumulated. After next round or consistent rounds of fasting, Gout will be gone.
Its the suppression of nitric oxide that makes uric acid thrive. Also as you get older your glutathione drops significantly and the foods you normally ate during younger years would now have to ne in check for glucose fructose and high levels if refined carbs which are bad for you.
The body can actually heal itself by believing a specific diet or improvement in lifestyle has beneficial effects. Also, caloric restriction diets will surpress ghrelin. If you were suffering with hyperuricmeia I don´t think you would find the advantages of autophagy quite so advantageous.
I don’t know where you are getting your information, but some of it is completely wrong. Fasting will absolutely lower your blood glucose. As you get into ketosis your cholesterol will rise, but who cares? We have been fed the cholesterol myth way too long. There are no unbiased studies connecting cholesterol with heart problems. Also, restricted carb intake and eating one meal a day, with no snacks will control diabetes.
Water Fasting is the quickest way to recovery from gout. You have to increase water intake unless you have KCD making it a little longer. However, you will still urinate the uric acid out of your body slowly but effective. The problem is eating anything with sodium or glucose. Those two are how you continue to increase uric acid in the body. Problem solved.
LOVE this comment thank you! I’m in a flareup right now in China traveling and am implementing this, hoping and praying it goes away quickly I have to do this trade show and LOTS of steps very soon!
What is KCD?
Pretty sure they meant CKD – chronic kidney disease
Actually, gout (or hyperuricemia to use it´s medical name) is aggravated by high purine content foods. Any type of fasting (irrespective of water intake) will certainly aggravate gout and raise uric acid levels metabolically leading to severe symptoms. If it was easy to control by autography then we would be recommending that as a treatment.
As someone who fast both extended and intermittently, I find fasting beneficial for a variety of reasons. The energy I feel is outstanding. I’m able to workout with weights. I have been doing it for 18 months, and I’ve lost in that time 80 lbs. My chronic knee pain has gone away.
There are studies that indicate that fasting activities the body’s natural process of autophagy which the protein that is old and damaged in the form of scar tissue and old damaged cells. It also allows for the body to attack cancer cells.
After the first day my hunger ( or more exactly ghrellin) goes down and I feel great.
Once the hunger comes back, I eat. And what I find is that I can’t eat as much because my stomach has shrunk. The key is to slowly incorporate solid food, by first introducing broth, and yogurt. Then nuts and raw vegetables. But the biggest thing I’ve seen to help avoid binging is avoiding sodas, and chips and cheap food. After a fast your craving for those things go away anyway.
What is the shortest period of your intermittent fasting? Thank you!
You want to greatly reduce the foods you consume that are high in purines. Red meat and a lot of seafood are in that zone.
Try Black cherries.
Not true. Glucose causes gout.
Source: Switched to carnivore diet and have not had a Gout flare since. I eat 90% red meat, once or twice a day. No snacks.
I lost weight and gained muscles, have zero joint pain. Avoiding beef and seafood to help gout is a myth. This article is completely wrong. Fasting also helps (just drink water).
Dear Spiro!
Found your info on internet.
Tried downloading your book but seems impossible ftom where I am.
It is great what I read.I need some more clarification for my case…
I am sure you are busy enough to may be read my email but I hope you ll get the time!
My name is Bobby and I am 34 years old and live basicly very healthy life.I m 177 cm height and weight 75 kg.Exercising a lot and have very fit body.I started doing just regularl yearly blood tests since 2010.
In 2010,11,12,13 the lab test surprised us by showing a bit high uric acid levels of around 450 (norm is 380).
Then I decided to change my foods and discovered the taste and power raw food is giving you!
I exercise a lot ,I don’t eat any processed foods,and white sugar(very rarely),I don’t eat bread(only protein bread made from seeds),I don’t consume anypotatoes,rice,pasta etc,I find them boring…
I am in love with the protein foods like raw salmon,raw tuna,of course rare beef steaks or even raw minced beef,raw sea food like raw prawns.
I eat also a lot of vegetables,fruits and drink around 3L water per day.
I also love raw nuts like cashews,brazilian nut,walnut,hazelnut,almond,sesame tahini…etc.
I eat all these foods raw because they taste better and I can feel the energy they are giving me when raw.
I also dont consume any additional salt.
Sometimes I also eat porridge oats with honey.
However, 2014,15,16 the blood test showed uric acid in the norm like around 320.I never had any symptoms.
But a month ago I got my right foot toe a bit bigger and painfull.
Went and checked my uric acid and it was a bit higher like 7.6 m mol at norm 7.2m moll(thats a different scale then I used before).I stopped immediately and beef and the prawns.
I took arcoxia and it went away but since 3 days again getting bigger…I really dont know what to eat and so much confusing info on the net …
Can I eat tomatoes?celery?salmon raw?,tuna?
I’d appreciate your assistance.
Thanks
Bobby
Hi Bobby!
Thank you for your email and sorry for the delayed response.
You have to eat 80% of your daily calories as complex carbs (foods as grown from the earth) like vegetables, legumes, fruit, whole wheat bread, pastas and rices, eat a lot of beans instead of meat for protein. 10% of your daily calories should be protein as in red meat, chicken, fish, try and keep your meats as lean as possible and final 10% of your daily calories should be fat as in milk, cheese, eggs, butter, nuts, yogurt. Don’t forget to workout and exercice. Very important and drink only water, tea and coffee. It’s simple formula.
Thank you and good luck!
Spiro
Hey. We are the same. I’m healthy, workout alot, normal BMI and have active lifestyle. Also I don’t drink beer, smoke or anything. The thing we have in common is we have high protein diet. Apparently this is bad for gout prone people like us. Also fasting is bad if you got lots of lean muscle as they break down to purine. This shit sucks because we’re being forced to eat more carbs (low gci) for macro. Cant even build muscles with this dumb shit disease. Fcukin garbage ass gout can suck a dick.