Antioxidant-Based Diet for Gout
Ninety percent of uric acid buildup in your body is due to poor kidney function, which is partly the result of free-radical damage. Antioxidants help defend against free radicals, and are an important part of any natural gout treatment.
What Are Antioxidants?
- Free radicals are substances that can break down body tissue at the cellular level. They come at us from every direction — arising from pollution in the air, water, and our food, via toxic chemical exposure, and so on.
- Exposure to free radicals should be minimized at all costs, although they cannot be completely avoided.
- Antioxidants are substances that convert damaging free radicals into harmless substances and even reverse the damage.
- We should strive to eat as many antioxidant-rich foods as possible to counter free radical damage.
When it comes to gout, antioxidants are particularly effective at repairing damage to kidney cells. Since the kidneys are the organs primarily responsible for eliminating uric acid, thereby lowering uric acid levels, it is helpful to consume as many antioxidants as possible.
An Antioxidant-Based Diet Includes:
- Ionized Water — Containing billions of antioxidants, it is arguably a more potent source of antioxidants than any solid food source.
- Fresh Fruits — Especially good are berries, cherries, citrus, apples, bananas, grapes, peaches, plums, and apricots.
- Fresh Vegetables — The best are dark leafy greens like kale and chard, celery, broccoli, tomatoes, and peppers.
- Some Nuts — Examples include walnuts, pecans, and pistachios.
- Certain Beverages — Organic coffee, green tea, yerba mate, and red wine.
- Superfoods — Including raw cacao (chocolate!), blue-green algae, goji and acai berries, and seaweed.
Eating an “antioxidant-based diet” means that MOST of your daily food intake consists of foods that are loaded with antioxidants. This type of diet is similar to (but has a different focus from) an alkaline diet, an anti-inflammatory diet, and a low-purine diet. And ALL of these types of diets are excellent for fighting gout.
Just remember that these various approaches do not conflict with one another. They are just different shades of grey of the “black and white” diet principles — eat more fresh vegetables and fruits and fewer processed carbs and a modest amount of proteins.
Bottom Line: Before the expansion of modern food processing, an antioxidant-rich diet was the norm. All aspiring gout killers should strive to return to that type of diet! For a comprehensive list of foods on an antioxidant-rich diet, check out my eBook “What to Eat for Gout.”
