A gout attack van be one of the most painful episodes that a person has to endure. They can come on unexpectedly, usually at night, and can leave the effected joint, red, swollen and the sufferer in absolute agony. So can a low uric diet stop gout attacks from striking?

If gout runs in your family or you have had a gout attack in the past, you are at risk of experiencing an attack or having a reoccurrence.

As anyone who has had the misfortune of suffering through a gout attack will tell you, the pain is extreme and can be pretty debilitating, often leaving you housebound and off work.

So, what can you do to avoid a gout flare-up? The easiest approach is to look at and adjust your diet to a low uric acid diet.

As the old saying goes; prevention is better than a cure - so making changes as soon as you realize you are at risk is very important.

The problem is that gout is caused by a build up of uric acid in the blood stream. When a specific saturation point is reached excess uric acid is deposited in the spaces and connective tissue of the joints. These deposits crystallize and the sharp, jagged crystals are the source of the swollen, painful joints.

Gout normally strikes in the big toe or one of the other foot or ankle joints, although it can effect any of the joints in the body. The reason for commonly affecting the feet is because they are the furthest points away from the heart and uric acid crystallizes in cooler temperatures.

Uric acid is formed naturally when the body processes purine, which is found in the tissues of our body and also in many of the foods we eat in a western diet - particularly animal protein.

When we have a diet that is high in purine-rich foods our uric acid levels can go up, which leaving the kidney with a harder job to eliminate the excess uric acid in a timely fashion.

The excess uric acid floats around in our bloodstream until it becomes saturated. At this point uric acid crystals are deposited in the joints.

There are two ways of tackling these high levels of uric acid, either speed up the kidney processes so that uric acid is processed and expelled quickly or reduce the amount of uric acid produced. An effective way to do this is by following a low uric acid diet.

Getting to grips with a low uric acid diet doesn't have to be hard. It boils down to these factors: Avoid foods high in purine and substitute these with foods with a low purine content.

The basic guidelines for this sort of diet is to avoid red meat, processed meat, shellfish and yeast extracts. Instead your diet should consist of gout friendly foods such as, cereals, some green vegetables, fruits and fruit juices, corn and tomatoes.

For a fuller list of foods to eat and avoid please sign up for our free newsletter, details at the end of the article.

By eating foods with a low purine content and avoiding those foods high in purine you will start to reduce the amount of uric acid in the body and allow the kidneys to get on top of their processing tasks.

Sticking to the low uric acid diet, avoiding alcohol and drinking lots of water can offer you the prevention necessary to avoid a further gout attack.