Gout Treatments And Remedies To Help Elimination Of Uric Acid Build Up
It is such a performance to take a urine sample to the hospital for testing. Can I check the acidity of my urine at home?
The acidity of your urine will be measured along with tests for ether contents, so it is important that you give samples to the hospital laboratory. However, you can do a simple test at home.
The principle is exactly the same as the litmus paper you may remember using in school chemistry classes to measure acidity. The widely available Dipstix papers, as well as testing for protein, glucose and blood, also give an approximate pH reading when the paper is dipped in a specimen of freshly passed urine. You can buy Dipstix from all dispensing chemist shops.
I’ve often seen cranberry juice mentioned in magazines for helping to keep bladder infections away. Would fruit juices have any use in helping the excretion of uric acid?
Cranberry and cherry juice are good remedies for gout as they are often recommended for people with urinary tract infections, as it seems to be the only fruit juice that actually acidifies urine enough to prevent the growth of bacteria in the bladder. Unfortunately, this acidifying effect would promote the formation of uric acid stones in the urinary tract, especially if you have a high rate of uric acid excretion and/or a low volume of urine. So you should avoid cranberry juice, but other fruit juices are all right in moderation.
I have problems emptying my bladder because of an enlarged prostate. Does this have implications for my gout, which has troubled me a few times in the last five years?
It sounds as though you have developed some obstruction to the flow of urine out of the bladder as a result of the enlargement of your prostate. Anything that obstructs the passage of urine will increase the risk of forming bladder stones, and uric acid bladder stones are fairly common in older men with an enlarged prostate.
This is partly because urine tends to become more acidic as we get older, and partly from the retention of urine as the bladder fails to empty completely when passing urine. This is likely to affect your gout only when the obstruction causes enough ‘back-pressure’ to damage the kidneys. If the kidneys deteriorate, the plasma urate level begins to climb and may threaten further attacks of gout. The problem should be sorted out if you have an operation to relieve or remove the obstruction.
Tags: gout, health, ph test, urine test
