Don’t play with your health

                             (By Lisa Sarah John, Courtesy Bangalore Times, Jul 3, 2006)

Many sportspeople suffer from high uric acid levels. This often results in gout, causing a shooting pain in the wrist, elbow, shoulder, ankle or toes.
When protein-rich foods, especially non-vegetarian like fish, seafood, mutton, chicken and beef, are digested in the body, uric acid is formed as a breakdown product. This must be flushed out of the body with plenty of water. If not, urate crystals form and lodge themselves in the cartilages of the joints like the wrist, elbow and ankles, resulting in a shooting or pricking pain.

This occurs more frequently in summer or when the weather cools suddenly and a person’s normal water intake drops. When players go into a camp or a special training session where workouts are very intense and they don’t drink enough water to compensate the heavy losses in sweat, this problem may arise. The first step is to drink more water than normal.

Also, Control the amount of non-vegetarian eaten. Try to eat it only once a day, preferably only at lunch so that there is time to digest it. Soups and gravies of meat or fish produce high levels of uric acid, so avoid them.

Sportsmen like athletes, tennis, badminton and cricket players seem quite susceptible to this. This could be due to increased perspiration during training and insufficient water consumption. Also, players in training camps eat large amounts of non-veg thinking it will build their body. But don’t eat more than two-three pieces of chicken or fish. When you do, the excess gets converted into fat and uric acid is also produced. You need protein but try and drink milk, eat egg white and dal along with the nonveg so that you eat lesser quantities of meat, fish and poultry.
Custard apple, chickoo, beans, peas, pulses like channa, rajma, moong sprouts and spinach must be avoided when there is pain. These foods contain high amount of purine, which gets converted into uric acid in the body. Sudden gout attacks of pain also occur after the consumption of too much alcohol.

Any kind of fasting and feasting can bring on an attack of pain. When fasting, tissues in your body are broken down and uric acid is formed from this. When you overeat, excess food is broken down uric acid concentrations rise and attacks of pain occur.

Men are more prone to this condition than women. The level in the blood should not be more than 6mg/dl for men and 5mg/dl for women. Some women develop this after menopause.

 

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