Does Being Over-Stressed Cause Gout Attacks?

This is a tweet I got a couple days ago:

“@TheGoutKiller Does being over stressed cause gout attacks ?”

To which I answered a resounding, YES!

In the early days of gout for the uninitiated, trying to figure out what causes gout can as bewildering as it is blindingly painful. What I’ve come to learn through my nutritional therapy course is that almost everyone is “adrenal fatigued”…but it’s not really because of that a$$hole that cut you off on the way to work this morning as much as you would think.

What Kind of Stress?

Or is the question really, “where does stress come from?” This is always a bad question to ask me. But more on that in a minute.

What is the most important thing to take into consideration is that we all sort of think that “stress” comes from some “thing” or some “where” outside of us . . . not true Ke-mo sah-bee. This is what’s going to blow you mind – do you know what the biggest source of stress is? Ready for this? Drum roll! It’s…

• SUGAR!

Haha! And you thought it was your boss!

Gout and Stress: It’s An Inside Job

Consider this: You’re on you way to work – busting through rush hour traffic, coffee (loaded with sugar) in one hand, two doughnuts in the other and steering with your knee. And if you’re the burly man I think you are, you’re also talking on your cell phone and smoking a cigarette. Get the picture?

Sugar, some say, is the most powerful and toxic drug on the planet. Couple that with cakes, cookies, breads, cereals, and pasta, and you’re blood sugar shoots straight up like a sky rocket. Then your poor little pancreas is huffing and puffing trying to crank out enough insulin to keep your glucose level from shooting right through the top of you head.

That my friend, is some stress.

No wonder you flipped off that old geezer going so slow in front of you when you roared passed him on the sidewalk.

The Real Stress That Causes Gout Attacks

So then you screech into work, jump out of the car tying your tie, run up the steps and leap into your chair and fire up your computer…only 30 seconds late. Phew. Made it.

Here is the real problem: Your pancreas has saved your a$$ AGAIN and your blood sugar is coming down…FAST. Whoa, wait a minute – Too Fast!

Now your pancreas is back-peddling – furiously trying to pump out the GLUCAGON fast enough to get your blood sugar back UP! Your poor little pancreas! It doesn’t know if it’s coming or going!

But here’s the bad news: You’ve pulled that crap on your faithful little pancreas day after day for way too long now. While it can still manage to get it up (and we can’t say that about you anymore) to make the insulin, but it’s shot for producing the glucagon.

So guess what this is? It’s a full on BLOOD SUGAR EMERGENCY!

. . .

. . .

Cortisol to the Rescue!

You see, when the pancreas can’t make glucagon anymore (glucagon is the other hormone besides insulin that the pancreas makes to RAISE blood sugar – sort of the opposite of insulin) the adrenal glands produce cortisol to “make” the liver and muscles convert their stores of glycogen into glucose.

This process was originally intended to kick in and save you from the dreaded saber-toothed tiger way back in the days when you were a caveman. Now it happens a few times a day just because you keep putting the wrong crap in your mouth and swallowing it.

After a few years of that, not only your pancreas is worn out but so is your adrenal function. Little by little, you end up tired, confused, sick, and getting gout all the time.

Hormones Are the Lenses We See Life Through

What is going on here is that between the hormones that our pancreas, adrenals, thyroid and others have to make just to try to keep us in balance – are all being thrown way out of whack. When your hormones are high quality and well balanced, the world is a much happier place in every way.

Overall, when this starts happening, it affects all parts of our health. Our digestion gets bad, we have high blood sugar, high blood pressure, our joints hurt, etc. Then coincidentally, life sucks, everybody pisses us off, and generally the world is an evil place.

So what’s the solution? It’s easy Grasshopper:

• Stop Eating Sugar!

But here’s the other part of it: Stop eating grains. i.e. breads, cereals, pasta, and anything that is made out of grains.

Do that for one month and email me to let me know how much better you’re feeling and how much you haven’t felt like you were about to get another gout attack for a while now.

  ☆ Remember!  Sugar is one of the biggest causes of stress…and stress does cause gout.