Many people only care about uric acid when acute gout attacks appear. However, during no pain, urate crystals can still continue to accumulate if uric acid levels remain high.
Professor Ly Mong Dao, Head of Rheumatoid Immunology Department, Hiep Hoa Hospital, Beijing, China, said that deposition of urate crystals can continue to cause inflammation and joint damage even when the patient no longer feels pain. Therefore, gout treatment needs to shift from just pain control to long-term management, while controlling uric acid and inflammation.
For people who have had tophi granules or have frequent gout recurrences, the goal of controlling uric acid is usually stricter. Experts recommend that people with tophi granules should bring uric acid to a low level appropriate to the doctor's instructions to create conditions for urate crystals to gradually dissolve.
Diet is not the only cause of gout but has a significant impact on the control of uric acid. People with high uric acid should limit animal organs, some types of seafood, red meat in large quantities and especially alcohol and beer.
Dr. Liu Yanying, Head of Rheumatism Department, Beijing Friendship Hospital, China, said that uric acid metabolism disorders are the foundation of gout; a high-energy diet, using a lot of alcohol and high-fructose drinks can increase the risk of increased uric acid and gout.
Instead, you should increase green vegetables, choose a variety of foods, control portion sizes and drink enough water if there are no contraindications for the heart or kidneys.
A common mistake is to assume that when the joint pain is gone, the gout is gone and the medicine stops on its own. In fact, pain relief does not mean that urate crystals have been removed.
When uric acid is maintained at a high level, urate crystals can continue to deposit in the joint, forming tophi particles over time, causing joint structural damage, deformation, and limited movement.
Therefore, people who have been diagnosed with gout need to follow their doctor's treatment plan and have regular uric acid tests. Do not arbitrarily increase, decrease, or stop using hypouricetics, even if the pain has disappeared.
It is important that tophi particles do not appear overnight. This is often a consequence of prolonged high uric acid and poorly controlled gout. Therefore, long-term uric acid control, proper diet and proper treatment are three important factors to help limit the formation and accumulation of tophi particles around the joints.
