Why Test Uric Acid?

Go and get your uric acid tested. Period.

I’ve been getting my uric acid tested a couple times a year now for 13 years. But then again, I’ve only got one kidney so I’ve probably got more at stake than you do.

As much as I think that western medicine is completely confused about how to deal with gout, their ability to test uric acid and get a good read on where you’re at is good information.

 

Testing the Blood and the Urine

We’ve got a lot to talk about when it comes to testing uric acid. The most common way that uric acid gets tested is by blood tests. It can however be tested by measuring what’s in the urine as well.

With the blood, anything under is 6.0 mg/dl is usually considered good…over that and you’re getting into dangerous gout territory. I’ve had mine up at 9.9 before, but I’ve heard of others at 11 and even 13!

As far as testing the urine goes, it is done by a 24 hour collection. The normal range is 250 – 750mg from a 1.5 – 4.4mmol collection. Personally, they’ve always used my blood test to take the UA measurement.

 

What Do We Really Find Out From a Uric Acid Test?

Is it that we’re producing too much uric acid? Or that we’re not getting rid of enough of it fast enough? For 90% of the people out there running around with gout, (a little joke there!) it’s that they’re not getting rid of enough of it fast enough.

Bert,

This email is a bit overdue, but I wanted to touch base and let you know how helpful, effective and encouraging your emails are. I appreciate that I am still on the list despite having difficulty watching your initial program.

The information and pointers that you give for me as a gout sufferer have been a blessing. It has have helped me understand the disease, given me tools to prevent it and have given me hope to overcome it. Regardless of the long term outcome in relation to the gout, your information helps someone live an overall healthier lifestyle,and enables people to think beyond a single-minded paradigm in an approach to beating gout.

This has been a journey for me, and a testing of my perseverance. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 5, “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character; and character, hope.”

While I sense that my battle with this disease is not done, I feel like it is definitely going in the right direction, and you have been a big part of guiding me and enabling to stay in that positive direction. And yes, your encouraging words have provided hope.

Please feel free to use anything in this email as a testimonial for your web site/advertising etc. It is the least I can do.

All the best,

Shane

Which brings us to an interesting point and I’ll use my well-worn analogy by comparing the effects of uric acid to the effects of lactic acid.

We’re all familiar with what happens when we work too hard or play too hard and we expend generous amounts of muscle energy. In the moment of the expenditure, the muscles “burn”. Then the next day, they’re sore. If you have any interest sports physiology, you’ve learned that the soreness comes from lactic acid…stuck in the muscle tissues. If you were to take a blood sample or a urine sample, would you find high amounts of lactic acid?

Possibly, but probably not. A great amount of it has now been flushed from the system by way of the fluids but why is there still soreness? Measuring the values in the body fluids is a great “before and after” snapshot, but they don’t account for what is left behind in the tissues of the body.

With gout, there is a similar problem. The uric acid crystallizes in the joints and gets “stuck” there. For many people, myself included, the gout drugs didn’t/don’t always work. You can show a fairly normal uric acid reading from a blood test, but still get gout attacks. That is because it’s not what is the the fluids of the body, but the acidic wastes that are in the tissues!

 

The Tests Do Help…

Knowing that there is an over-abundance of uric acid in your bloodstream and how much, helps us all to make decisions about how to proceed. To reiterate, 90% of everyone with gout, is simply not able to get rid of enough of it fast enough.

For this reason, the use of pharmaceutical drugs for gout becomes questionable. The most widely used, accepted, and tolerated gout drug on the market is Allopurinol. It is a xanthine oxidase inhibitor…or, it inhibits the production of uric acid. But if the problem is that we are not able to get rid of enough of it fast enough, why are we limiting the production?

It’s for this reason, investigating the role and ability of the kidneys to balance the pH of the body chemistry, as they do under normal healthy conditions, comes into question. The kidneys function to constantly adjust the acid/alkaline balance throughout the body. The standard testing for kidneys doesn’t measure their ability balance the pH.

Personally, my one kidney always showed that it was working very well. But why then, was I still getting gout attacks? It wasn’t until I discovered more about cellular health and learned about the acid/alkaline balance of my body and how I could help my kidney do a better job.

. . .

Seems you have really gotten into this. It’s a disease nobody really knows about. You are becoming the ‘go to’ person about Gout. Thanks so much. ~ Jeff

. . .

 

Testing Uric Acid Yourself?

If I was still brawling with the Gout Beast on a frequent basis, I may look into this. As it is, I decided to look into it anyway just to have more good information and options for you to work with. And here’s why:

• Because the kidneys can move in and out of their capability to balance the pH of the body chemistry, knowing what your uric acid is looking like day to day, or week to week would be helpful.

Life happens. You get busy. Then you don’t drink enough water and stay well hydrated like you should. You travel. You end up compromising your sleep schedule and eat a lot of crappy food. You find yourself in smoggy cities, breathing and touching toxic chemicals sometimes. You want to exercise but it’s inconvenient and it doesn’t happen. The wife, the boss, the co-workers, the kids…they all make demands that from time to time cause you an undue amount of stress. Sometimes you get feeling so good…or so bad, that you take too much advantage of alcohol.

All of those life circumstances and situations can add to the overall acidity in your body. When they do, the kidneys have to make priorities about which acidic substances get dealt with and which ones don’t. Uric acid falls on the list of priorities. The body has an alternative for it; send it off to some joint far away from the vital organs for “safe keeping”…until the condition of over-acidity clears and the kidneys can catch up.

It seems like uric acid meters are more commonly used in Europe – the only company that seems to be a good one to buy from is UASure USA – click here to learn about uric acid meters. I wanted to be an affiliate for them but they don’t have an affiliate program…yet!

 ☆ Remember!  Having a way to test for yourself could be very helpful.

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