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Gout Busters!

I know stop groaning! But it’s true. Men who get more than 1500mg of vitamin C a day reduce their risk of developing the painful joint disease gout by 45%.

US researchers who have recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, believe that vitamin C can help prevent the risk of gout, although they did say that just popping a vitamin C tablet with every beer was unlikely to compensate or indeed constitute a healthy lifestyle!

In a 20 year study of nearly 47,000 men there were significant benefits to two groups especially. Those taking 1000-1499mg of vitamin C, and those taking 1500mg vitamin C.

Although thought of as a Victorian condition, gout has slowly been on the increase over the last 30 years, and currently 1.5% of the UK population has the condition. Lead researcher Dr Hyon Choi, of Boston University School of Medicine, said there were good reasons to believe that vitamin C was having a beneficial effect on the men.

How it works!
Vitamin C appears to reduce the levels of uric acid in the blood – a build up of this naturally occurring compound can form crystal deposits in and around the joints, leading to pain and swelling. Vitamin C expels the acid from the blood via the kidneys.

Rheumatologist, Dr Michael Snaith, of the UK Gout Society, said ‘that does not mean to say that taking whacking great amounts of vitamin C is going to eliminate gout’.

But it couldn’t hurt could it?

Source: BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/7932158.stm