How to Help Your Husband Manage Gout

Last Updated on June 24, 2019 by Ellen Christian

Marty usually turns to me to help him with his health and his medical conditions. Wives often hold the role of caregiver in their family whether that care is for a parent, husband or a child. If your husband relies on you for help with his health, you may be wondering how to help your husband manage gout whether it’s an occasional flare up or a chronic condition. This post has been sponsored, but the story is my own.

Help Your Husband Manage Gout

Gout is a form of arthritis that is noted for its severe pain, redness, and tenderness in the joints. The pain and tenderness are the results of too much uric acid crystallizing and being deposited in the joints. Gout is inflammatory and primarily affects men aged 40 and older although it does affect some women and those who are younger than 40 as well. More than eight million Americans experience gout.

Diagnosis

Gout most frequently affects the joint in the big toe, but it can also occur in your feet, hands, knees, ankles and wrists. Most frequently, gout is related to diet and lifestyle, and management recommendations generally include changes in diet. Helping your husband understand the root cause of the disease will be key if you’re to help him manage his condition.

A gout attack may appear once and then disappear for weeks, months or years. If more gout attacks do happen, they tend to become more frequent and the time in between attacks becomes shorter and lasts longer. Once you or your husband have been diagnosed with gout, it’s important that you address the underlying causes of the disease first.

Diet Change

While gout can be genetic, what you eat plays a very large part in whether or not you’ll develop gout and how severe it will be. Most gout diets encourage you to stay away from foods that are high in purines.  To help gout symptoms and flare ups, it is often recommended that you eliminate or reduce the following types of foods from your diet:

• High fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
• Organ meats
• Anchovies
• Seafood
• Red Meat
• Processed Foods

Maintaining an ideal body weight is highly recommended, so weight loss is often key. Other diseases that are frequently connected with high uric acid levels are diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and heart disease.  Since HFCS hides in so many different types of foods, learning to read food labels is important.

Avoid Alcohol

It is often recommended that those who suffer from gout eliminate alcohol from their diet entirely. Alcohol may raise your blood glucose levels and your uric acid levels so if it is used at all; it should be used with great care or not at all.

Weight Management

Managing your weight will often be accomplished by simply changing how and what you eat. Gout tends to be more common in people that are overweight or obese than those that are at a healthy weight. Once you begin removing foods that are high in purine, you may want to also consider lowering the number of starches in your diet to help with weight loss and overall well-being. Too many carbohydrates are often connected to weight gain.

Exercise is also very important to weight management and can help improve circulation which will help to reduce his uric acid levels. If your husband is resistant to exercise in general, suggest a short walk after dinner around the neighborhood as a way to spend time together.

Learn About the Options

There are a number of different options for gout including arthritis medication, joint surgery, and natural arthritis alternatives. There are also several natural herbs that can help lower uric acid levels in your body including things like celery seeds, turmeric, dandelion, and bromelain. Eating more foods that are known to have anti-inflammatory properties like cherries and fresh fish may also help.

NutriGout is a best selling dietary supplement that is sold on Amazon.com. This dietary supplement has 6 natural ingredients that help keep uric acid levels at a healthy level. The six ingredients are Turmeric, Milk Thistle Extract, Bromelain from Pineapple, Celery Seed, Dandelion Extract and Chanca Piedra. It’s 100% vegetarian, vegan, GMO free, with no artificial colors or flavors.  NutriGout is basically a food that provides nutritional benefits to a gout sufferer and should supplement a healthy gout diet and healthy lifestyle. You can buy NutriGout on Amazon.com for only $24.95 for 60 vegetarian capsules of 500 mg each. It comes with a 100% money back guarantee.

As with any disease, education is key. I encourage you to learn more about your different options and how you and your husband can lead a healthier lifestyle as a way to manage gout and its symptoms. The website goutandyou.com is a valuable resource of gout dietary information and natural remedies. The website owner is an author of the book Gout and You: The Ultimate Gout Diet & Cookbook which explains what a gout diet should consist of.

How do you help your husband manage gout and live a healthier lifestyle?