About Gout

The one hiccup I had in my first year of eating carnivore was my first (and only so far) experience with gout.  It was about 4 months into my experiment, immediately after 30 days of eating only grass-fed beef striploins (which I now realize had less fat than I needed, but that's another story).  I was sent to Bahrain for work, and in Bahrain there is plenty of delicious food.  Of course, I was going to eat all that food, and I hit the ground running, eating all the carbs laid before me, whether rice, bread or potatoes.  About one week into the trip and eating like this, I had two different meals consisting of beef and chicken livers in a row.

That night I felt a pain in my left big toe that woke me up.  By the time morning rolled around, I found I couldn't step on my left foot without excruciating pain.  I had to call in sick to work and call around town during Ramadan to find a hospital.  Limping my way through the hotel to the taxi, I went to the hospital and saw the doctor, who immediately diagnosed me with gout.  They shot me up with some pain killer, gave me a dose of some kind of medicine, and more meds for later, and then sent me home saying to stay off the foot for 2 days (ugh more work missed).

I told the doctor about my all meat diet just prior and he said that made sense to him as my body had gotten used to high uric acid levels from the red meat that were steady.  But then coming to Bahrain and immediately changing my diet, combined with those liver dishes (high uric acid contents), I gave my body a form of chemical whiplash that resulted in the depositing of some of those uric acid crystals in my toe joint, and thus the gout.  I asked him if he thought I was in any danger of more gout if I returned to the all meat diet and he said he didn't think so, so long as I transitioned slowly from one diet to another.

So, that's what I've done since then.  Having a "cheat" meal is usually no harm, but switching drastically from eating all meat to no meat for several days in a row, and then back again, is not a good idea.  When I had my blood tested at the end of the full year, my doctor here in Japan commented on the high uric acid levels, but he didn't indicate it was any direct threat, just that I should be careful.  And I am...I do still love liver, but I try to be judicious and not eat too much at any one time.