How Can Vitamin D Benefit You With Your Gout?
Vitamin D is very important for you as a gout sufferer, actually more than you think! Vitamin D is very important for your bone health by increasing the absorption of calcium and phosphorus. Remember gout attacks weaken bones over time and could destroy supporting cartilage and muscle, interfering with muscle synthesis, whereas vitamin D helps improve the function of muscles. It also aids your immune system decreases your risk of heart attack.
You get vitamin D from the sun with the sun?s rays being absorbed into your body. There are very few dietary sources of vitamin D (mainly salmon, tuna, egg yolk), so if you live in a northern climate like I do in Canada, we don?t get as much sun as we need then we need to supplement our intake with vitamin D supplements that you can buy online or at your local health store. In addition, as we age, our skin?s ability to make vitamin D lessens and there is a higher incidence to develop gout when older rather than younger. Can there be a connection here? Perhaps but more research is needed.
Evidence of Vitamin D Helping With Gout
There is some evidence from one particular study that found gout patients with lower vitamin D3 levels correlated with higher uric acid levels. There is another study that states that the most prevalent season for gout attacks is during the spring where vitamin D levels are the lowest so there could be something here but again more research is needed. When we take a look at other forms of arthritis like rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis even psoriasis, we can learn a lot from these closely related arthritic conditions.
A 2013 University of Saskatchewan study states that people who suffer from autoimmune rheumatic diseases were 5 times more likely to develop different types of arthritis due to lower vitamin D levels. Another Swiss study concluded that rheumatoid arthritis patients who had the lowest vitamin D levels suffered from the most severe rheumatoid arthritis. In another study, the researchers found that all patients with rheumatoid arthritis had low vitamin D and severity was actually proportional to degree of vitamin D deficiency. I?m sure there is some truth in it for gout sufferers as well but more research is needed to examine vitamin D and gout. I examined numerous other studies relating to arthritis and it looks like it?s strongly correlated to low vitamin D levels.
Many other studies that I examined on vitamin D also concluded that the vitamin is a very strong pain reducer and reduces many kinds of pains like back pain, dental pain, menstrual cramps, arthritic pain and many other different pains. In one study just 500 IU of vitamin D helped lower rheumatoid arthritic pain.
Vitamin D may not only lower pain but inflammation as well and boy do us gout sufferers have plenty of that! Studies show that vitamin D may fight kidney, liver, gingivitis, muscle inflammation, inflammation after a surgery and many other inflammatory diseases. If you have common sense and really think about it, I?m sure it can help us gout sufferers with our inflammation although no studies have been done with gout inflammation and vitamin D.
In a study published in January 2019 found that lower vitamin D levels are associated with depression in patients with gout!
In conclusion, I?ve been taking a vitamin D supplement for years now and I recommend that if you live in northern climate countries like Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Korea, parts of the United States and so on that you too take a vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D by itself, comes in 400 UI and 1000 UI tablets.
Do not take more than 2000 UI of vitamin D daily without medical supervision and be sure to speak to your doctor about including vitamin D supplements before proceeding. Also note that vitamin D is different in the sense that is it a fat soluble. Meaning vitamin D can be ?made up? in case you miss taking it a few days, it is the only vitamin you can do this with! Finally, I personally believe from all this related evidence that vitamin D is essential to the gout sufferer, so make sure to add it in your daily gout diet.