Question regarding Gout and Atkins
 

Let me throw a bit of history in here.

My pops is on a low carb diet per his doctor's request.

He's borderline diabetic but is now supposed to control it by diet.

Everything looks fine, especially when he eats more proteins etc, all his blood work is coming back great.

Anyway, today he was diagnosed with gout.

His doctor told him it was probably due to eating so much protein.

I've looked up stuff on google and can see that this can be part of the problem, but I've also seen that there are more factors that can be involved such as diabetes, obesity, hyperlipidism, hypertension which is all pretty much solved through Atkins.

His question and mine is has anyone ever been diagnosed with gout because of Atkins, or cured their problems with gout because of atkins?

Sorry for the long read, but thanks in advance. :)

Hi Vegasman,

Does the doctor have your father on medication for the gout? Because it usually responds well. Poor man - he has my sympathy. I believe gout to be very painful.

I think that if you are susceptible to gout, low carbing can make it worse. The reason is mainly because of LC's diuretic qualities. How much water was/is your father drinking? I do know of at least one person here (Wbahn) who had an episode of gout that coincided with drinking insufficient water.

Have you tried a search on "gout?" Just go to the icon at the top of the screen. It helps to confine your search to the General health forum, also helps to click on "Show results as posts." (Sorry if you already knew this. :rolleyes: )

I hope he recovers quickly!

:rose:Rosebud:rose:

Gout? me too
 

I've been on a LC diet for about 6 months when I started to get pain in my foot. Took a day or 2 to sort it out, but the correct diagnosis is gout with a normal uric acid levels. Pretty common.
You can check out the gout web sites (I have already). The ones from the academic centers make it pretty clear that most uric acid is not dervied from diet, but from your own metabolic composition.
I don't want to get too scientific, but dispite all the stories, gout has nothing to do with either too much protein, or too much red wine, or too much high living. What is does have to do with a family (genetic) predisposition and an increased metabolic rate that is associated with among other things, a successful weight loss program.
I first thought that I would go the alternate medicine route, but after hobbling with a cane for a week, I finally went to NSAIDS and Allopurinol, and the symptoms have settled down.
I am still on the LC diet.
The hard part was sorting out that I was going to have to change my exercise routine, and have switched to swimming for the summer.

Hope that helps.

Thank you for the responses.

I have been doing a lot of research off of google, and from the search forum in this particular forum.

Based upon what I've come across the gout my father is experiencing could be caused by a variety of factors.

#1 he's overweight.
#2 he suffers from hypertension
#3 he's borderline diabetic
#4 he suffers from hyperlipidism
#5 he takes blood pressure medication *which has been stated to be a possible cause on some resource sites* and recently the medication was doubled.
#6 his dietician has him on a restricted potassium diet *potassium helps to make the uric acid more soluble*

I told him from what I had gathered in these forums and from what I had found on the net that he needed to:
#1 see another doctor
#2 check into allupurinol
#3 drink more water 104 oz based upon calculating his weight and weight needed to be lost.
#4 check into seeing if he can increase his potassium levels.

I found a really interesting page that has a lot of interesting information that could benefit others around here, and have also passed this info on to my father.
http://www.health911.com/remedies/rem_gout.htm

I'm trying to get him to try Atkins, especially since he's already on a carb restricted diet and experienced an amazing amount of weight loss when he started eating more protein than was allowed. Funny thing was when his dietician found out about the protein she told him to stop and he hasn't lost any weight since, in fact he's gained some weight back.

Thx for the info, I'll continue reading and see what else I can pass onto him.