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

nytimes.com

171–180 of 210 posts

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

#171
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obese people avoiding fruit is one of the biggest eye roll on offer. I had a fat roommate who measured out the raw almonds he ate because they were calorie dense the same day he’d eat two whole pizzas for dinner. Meanwhile, almonds and bananas aren’t the things making people fat. Looking at my own fat friends, some tasty fruit is the only fiber they even get. And vegetables aren’t even on the menu of most fat people…

My own anecdote is that my dad was diabetic and he definitely didn't understand how much sugar was in fruit. He did ok controlling his blood sugar, but he considered fruit to be "healthy" and so ate about as much of it as he wanted, which regularly caused blood sugar spikes. And I know it's not the same thing, but the number of times our small kids get offered juice as a "healthy" option when it's got almost as much…

Sadly, as said elsewhere in the thread, many (but not all!) modern fruit varieties have been selected for sugar content.

However, some fruits and vegetables are particularly important for their fiber content even if you can't get rid of the fructose.

Things like inulin or resistant starch are very important to avoid having too many Bacteroides and too few Bifidobacterium, which is one of the big differences in westernized human guts vs more traditional ones.

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

#172
post #92
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Cranberry juice/extract? I've often heard that it can help the body break down the Uric acid.

I hadn’t heard of cranberry - but cherry juice is claimed to help. Never did much for me (diagnosed with Gout a few years ago)

Tart cherries (sometimes called Montmorency cherries) are pretty much miraculous gout treatments. I regularly take varying amounts as a prophylactic (I pour the concentrate into other drinks), but back when I was getting acute attacks I could knock them out in an hour if I drank say half a cup of the concentrate. (again, not straight: it's too tart by itself!) There is a local grocery store that carries this concentrate in the refrigerated section, but even the hot-on-the-shelf jugs at GNC seem to work.

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

#173
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.

I have yet to meet someone who is obese and his calorie intake is primary from fruits.

I see people drinking smoothies thinking they are the healthy choice not realising a smoothie has more sugar in than a Coke. They are not even a good post-surf recovery drink for the surfers who invented them and gave them the infantile name!

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On mobile so I won’t be looking up a source. Was listening to a pod cast from a a cardiac specialist whose position was that higher salt intake is not as important for heart and artery health as long as you have balanced exercise and hydration. His point was that excessive carbohydrates lead to inflammation which leads to plaque build up which leads to heart disease. But salt can be ok.

There might also be evidence that as with so many other things, different people require different amounts. My partner consistently shows low sodium in their blood work, yet eats way more salt than I do (my blood results are normal) and craves saltier things. They will put salt on already-salted foods that I consider too salty already.

How much is 'different people' and how much is different actions? Is eating salt a 1:1 direct cause of high sodium or is it relative to hydration, exercise, and other factors?

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does not change your calorie intake at all as its the same amount. Glossing over what an insulin spike makes your body do with those calories is a bit disingenuous.

Exactly this. The most common and pervasive misconceptions about nutrition use the extremely simplistic view of it, believing that in the end all matters is that you end up with N grams of say sugar. The effects on the body of consuming an apple versus the equivalent two table spoons of raw sugar are not even remotely similar.

They are when you look at the calorie intake.

That is the point i made and still make.

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

#178
post #53

Started having severe gout attacks in 2004. Doctors are particularly unaware about gout. Despite having extremely painful and long attacks (during one attack, spent more than a month in bed unable to walk), all the doctors I saw had no idea despite endless tests. Finally based on my own research I suggested gout and they were like "oh yes, I suppose it could be that". Once diagnosed, doctors are quick to get you on d…

> doctors are quick to get you on daily drugs for the rest of your life. When all you really need is an 8oz glass of tart cherry juice per day [0]. If you have "trigger" foods [1], then those still need to be avoided, but the cherry juice will allow you to enjoy a normal, non-excessive diet of pretty much everything else. [0] Sweet cherry juice works too, but you need a lot more of it, to the point where it would be…

I don't take near that much, but it still seems to work. I haven't had a flare for over a year.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Bingo. People would rather find anything to blame but themselves. Change is also hard. People can change; most wont. You see it far too often in "fat acceptance" and "healthy at every size" communities.

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

#180

I think the jury is still out on what the the 100% correct treatment of gout or many of the modern life style related sickness. But many can be cured by reversing what one eat to what people ate 100 years ago or 20.000 years ago. 100 years would mean no processed food, vegetable oils and a lot less sugar. 20.000 years would also remove all type of wheat and corns. Here is a guy who cured gout with the carnivore diet.…

> 100 years would mean no vegetable oils Huh? Olive oil was known to at least the Greeks and Romans, and some disputed citation on Wikipedia even says that olives were harvested even 8.000 years BC.

Diets are more universal now. In many locations, in the recent past, frying would have been done with lard rather than vegetable oil. One can make lard from pigs that one raises in the backyard. I don't even know what a canola plant looks like, and olive trees tend not to like climates that freeze for months at a time.
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