Skim Milk/Calcium and Gout
For what it's worth, I have been drinking tons of skim milk for many years, simply because I have always loved milk, and switched to skim maybe 15-20 years ago. I drink 2 gallons per week and sometimes mire than that. And I had my first of two gout attacks, two days apart, in Feb. So I don't know how relevant skim milk may be. I also have Paget's disease, so the milk factor may be moot in the calcium equation.
I wish this group would develop a "profile" form for all members, capturing basic and important histories of all of us. Mini-biographies, not using real names necessarily. This info could be provided to all of us and we could draw our own conclusions, based on the preponderance of evidence, so to speak.
Negevoli
As I said, I don't know whether calcium, i.e. milk, skim or
otherwise, is good/bad/no effect for us. My suspicion is that it will
reduce your attack ferocity and frequency but I do not have any data
on it yet.
I agree with you that a proifile of each of us would be very useful I
love the idea. It is a great idea and we should do it.
We should be systematic about it though and make out a spread sheet
that can be filled out and once filled out, it we can collect the
information and have a computer crunch it. I suspect that some very
important correlations would fall out of such an exercise.
If we do it we should put together a list of the things that should
be on the list. I'll list a few for a start
Age, height, weight, your best weight if you are not fat(this is
important as it will allow us to determine what the uric acid load
that is being stored up in the fat is and thereby parhaps start to
predict the probability of an attack) , race, gender, primary attack
site-i.e. big toe.., length of attack, medication taken during
attack, how much of each and for how long, activity level-hard to
measure but we can come up with something, other members of the
family affected?, Killer foods, list say 5, mine are shrimp, lobster,
clams, mushrooms and alass steak, foods we are pretty sure are ok,
white rice, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, all fruits, ..........
I hesitate to volunteer to build the spread sheet as I don't know
spread sheets that well.
There have been numerous posts regarding this food and that food and
each post wanting to know if it is good or bad for us with replies
suggesting that it seems OK to the responder or not as the case may
be, . None of us knows what the uric acid load of the specific foods
is. It is something that can be precisely calculated and there should
be a table where we can look up, in, for example grams per kilogram
of uric acid, or perhaps of DNA and RNA.. I know, that in the raw
food form, uric acid is not present but the precursors are there and
the chemistry of their breakdown is known. From the precursors, i.e.
from the DNA content, the probable uric acid load can be calculated.
I say probable because each of us will deal with DNA and RNA in a
different way. Some of us will be able to use more and others will
use less and thus, there will be a variable amount of uric acid
produced depending on each person't specific metabolic cycle but, we
can know the exact ranges of DNA and RNA present in each food and
then we can callibrate for ourselves how bad a particular food is. My
list, from my medical advsers says "bad for you, only take a small
amount", and then it says "probably bad, eat only in moderation".
Two days now with no NSAID help and the red and pain seem to be
going away...
That is, by the way, happiness...
I'll add a few more measurements:
Additional medical conditions in person or family: diabetes, kidney
stones, food alergies, etc.
Injuries (like to the big toe, for instance?)
Stress levels? (too sujective?)