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Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

nytimes.com

111–120 of 210 posts

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#111
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most fruit are nowhere near as healthy as most people expect they are. They have been selectively bred over many hundreds of years to be far larger, sweeter and more devoid of micronutrients than they were hundreds of years ago. The amount of sugar (especially fructose) in fruits like apples, oranges and bananas is shockingly high, and can cause or exacerbate conditions such as obesity, fatty liver, type 2 diabetes,…

I have yet to meet someone who is obese and his calorie intake is primary from fruits. Edit: I just did napkin calculation. Sedentary 170cm high male weighting 66kg would need to eat 20 apples a day to keep his weight. Or 3600 grams per day. The shocking high sugar content still means nearly uneatable quantity of apples just to get enough calories for rather small office worker who does no sport.

That's only 2 apple pies, assuming you don't eat any of the crusts. I don't think that's uneatable other than the fact the crust is the best part.

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#112
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are comparing the sugars in raw food to something heavily processed. That's not a good comparison.

Sugar is sugar. HFCS is a bit worse, but in the broader context of dietary intake it will make no difference.

That’s a very simplistic way of looking at things which isn’t supported by medical science.

Specifically glucose, fructose, sucrose, are worth treating differently for the purposes of diet management.

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#113
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not entirely true. Gout is caused by excessive levels of uric acid, which is an end-product of purine metabolism. You can get uric acid via two pathophysiologic mechanisms: under-excretion of uric acid, or over-production. Under-excretion is by far and away the most common cause of gout (think ~90% of cases). Causes for this include things like chronic kidney disease or an inborne/hereditary problem (like you…

Not to disagree but can you define nebulous terms like excess and put those in context for us who may not be professionals with underlying knowledge of quantity of what acceptable levels and excess are. Anecdotally, I drink a lot of beer but only twice a week. The rest of the week I may very well be a monk. Not a drop. Does the quantity I consume on weekends count as excess? On what scale or timeline?

Not OP, but his description lines up with my experience. Short answer is, probably imo. Long answer is, every person is different, and if you don't have gout, you may never get it.

In my case, I had what I thought was a persistent toe sprain for years and only later realized it was gout. I'm sure alcohol contributed, as did dehydration, poor running form, the keto diet I was on, and sudden weight loss.

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#114
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most national dietary guidelines encourage eating fruits and vegetables, with an emphasis on the vegetables. The sugar amount in fruit has a direct impact on the overall calories you consume but since fruit are also high in fibre, the contained sugar is not comparable to, say, a chocolate bar.

Most national dietary guidelines are backed by weak epidemiology and are rarely corroborated by RCTs. See: the food pyramid

And are instead heavily guided by ag industry lobbyists.

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#115
post #103
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not entirely true. Gout is caused by excessive levels of uric acid, which is an end-product of purine metabolism. You can get uric acid via two pathophysiologic mechanisms: under-excretion of uric acid, or over-production. Under-excretion is by far and away the most common cause of gout (think ~90% of cases). Causes for this include things like chronic kidney disease or an inborne/hereditary problem (like you…

Gout cannot be caused by your diet. You can temporarily increase your uric acid levels by eating purine rich food/drink beer etc. But if your body is excreting it, as it should be - the levels won't remain high enough to build up crystals. It takes years of persistent high levels, it's always caused by your body. But you can reduce attacks by changing diet, loosing weight or taking medication. If your body was functi…

Bad analogy, but you can run your car without an oil change for a damn long time. The eventual breakdown isn't just an innate action taken by your car.

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#116
post #30

Dispelling bullshit time. Gout isn't caused by what you eat, it's an underlying problem with your kidneys/liver/body and an inability to extract uric acid. It can be exasterbated by drinking beer, dehydration, red meat etc. Saying it's caused by what you eat is a bit like saying peanuts cause peanut allergies, or eating gluten causes coeliacs. You already have the condition, the things you eat makes it worse. I've be…

Apparently only something like Certainly can imagine other cases can be aggravated by diet choices.

How is something diet aggravated but not diet related? Seems like all these people who claim there's no _meaningful_ correlation here are just setting goalposts in a way where they don't feel compelled to change their diets.

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#117
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By cutting out “fructose” surely you don’t mean cutting out fruit? Do mean derivatives like fructose syrup and stuff?

Most fruit are nowhere near as healthy as most people expect they are. They have been selectively bred over many hundreds of years to be far larger, sweeter and more devoid of micronutrients than they were hundreds of years ago. The amount of sugar (especially fructose) in fruits like apples, oranges and bananas is shockingly high, and can cause or exacerbate conditions such as obesity, fatty liver, type 2 diabetes,…

The amount of sugar (especially fructose) in fruits like apples, oranges and bananas is shockingly high, and can cause or exacerbate conditions such as obesity, fatty liver, type 2 diabetes, gout and other metabolic or inflammatory diseases.

If you want some idea of how bad it is: monkeys get diabetes from bananas now

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/monkeys-bann...

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#118
post #6

I watch/read a lot of history and I am always curious, if you traveled back in time how would you treat gout? Without medications to manage uric acid what would you do for Ben Franklin, DaVinci, Michelangelo or Charlemagne? Have them lose weight? Stay away from foods X, Y, and Z but eat more of A/B/C? Does exercise help/hurt? Are there any herbs etc that we know today would lower uric acid which you could find with y…

Both Franklin and Da Vinci were well-known and documented tea-totalling vegetarians. The kind you avoid inviting to parties because they won't stop proselytizing it.

Turns out genetic metabolic problems have always been around and modern simple "life hacks" like a fad diet product or an exercise product aren't always the cure.

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#119
post #111
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to meet someone who is obese and his calorie intake is primary from fruits. Edit: I just did napkin calculation. Sedentary 170cm high male weighting 66kg would need to eat 20 apples a day to keep his weight. Or 3600 grams per day. The shocking high sugar content still means nearly uneatable quantity of apples just to get enough calories for rather small office worker who does no sport.

That's only 2 apple pies, assuming you don't eat any of the crusts. I don't think that's uneatable other than the fact the crust is the best part.

I would assume we talk about fresh apples. If you process it in such a heavy way it is something completely different. You can also eat a lot more dried apples then fresh ones. Or you can drink a lot more apple juice then eat apples.

Re: Once the disease of gluttonous aristocrats, gout is now tormenting the masses

#120
post #21

I had my first gout attack a couple years ago several weeks into a keto diet (had done keto before with no issues). I found https://www.virtahealth.com/blog/keto-adapted which shows a graph of uric acid spiking as you begin the diet and returning back to baseline after several weeks, which was something I didn't know before, but I was still confused because it was already at several weeks. To make a long story short…

Varying levels is just as meaningful as high levels in causing attacks. So you'd might have been caused by the precipitous drop.
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