Is 8.2 uric acid level too high?

[michael]

I am 46 yrs old my weight 68kg and my height 5.8

my uric acid level is 8.2 sometimes back it wad 7.2 it keeps fluctuating is this range is too dangerous please suggest with proper diet

[Posted to GoutPal helpdesk from old forum topic: What should I do to reduce my uric acid level permanently?

For most of us, the high uric acid that causes gout is a permanent result of genetic and other factors. Bad diet can make it worse, but healthy eating is rarely enough to control uric acid.

]

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Is 8.2 Uric Acid Level High?

[Keith Taylor]

Hi Michael,

8.2mg/dL is definitely too high for uric acid. Because it will cause gout to get worse every day, even if you have no symptoms. Also, 7.2 is too high. So, you must work on your gout diet to get below 5.

Gout diet has to be personal.

I start with what you eat now. Then, I suggest ways you can improve it. So. please start posting about what you eat each day, and we will take it from there.

Also, I highly recommend you ask your doctor for a 24-hour urine test. That measures your uric acid excretion rate. It’s only important in a small percentage of pharmaceutical gout treatments. But, it’s very important for all gout sufferers who want to control gout through diet improvements.

[Bipintm007]

High uric acid levels and food

Hi there,
My name is Bipin Thomas Mathew and I have recently got diagnosed with high Uric acid levels ( 7.8mg/dl ) .

Could you please suggest me the foods that I should stay away from and the food that I can eat , I am little confused here because many articles are saying different things . It would be great if you could suggest

[Sam]

Vegetarian food diet to control gout and blood sugar

I looked at your cereal table from positive to negative which means positive no on gout pal index is better for gout, since I am pure vegetarian which food I can eat to keep Uric acid low and keep sugar low as well.

I was following Dr. axe on line suggestions for gout take celery seed extract and tart cherry extract which lower uric acid.

Does lemon water help you Reducing uric acid in the body?

Thank you

[Editor note: see Celery Seed for Gout Forum (linked above) for more topics concerning celery seed extract]

[Keith Taylor]

Thanks for your question about vegetarian gout diet, Sam.

In theory, vegetarian diet is a good starting point for gout. Now, you have to tweak your gout diet to maximize it’s uric acid lowering potential. That can’t work by adding certain foods that might lower uric acid. We need to look first at total food and drink intake. Then, we can identify and test certain food changes.

If you don’t want to do a full diet analysis, I have to ask you more about your ideas on lemon water:
1. What exactly do you mean by lemon water?
2. What will you remove from your existing diet to make way for the lemon water? (i.e. with what are we comparing lemon water, to see if it lowers uric acid?)

[Cindy]

High Uric Acid with high blood sugar

My husband has just did a body check & his uric acid is 0.543mmol/L & Glucose is 6.39. Now the doctor said she cannot start Allopurinol because of the high glucose reading. Is this true? Or he should start Allopurinol anyway to “take care” of one thing first?

[Keith Taylor]

Sorry, Cindy, I’m not a doctor, and I have no idea why blood glucose results of 6.39 would indicate against using allopurinol.

As a layman who understands gout, I would have thought allopurinol would be of value. Your husband needs to get more information about why the doctor won’t prescribe. It’s very important not to ignore excess uric acid.

If you can get more information, I can help better. All the research I have read shows allopurinol to be beneficial to diabetics. But, I know very little about diabetes, and I don’t have enough information to convince me that this is a problem that your husband suffers.

[Cindy]

Hi Keith, thanks for your reply. As you have mentioned many times that we have to “educate” our dr. sometimes. In our case, we will go see another doctor ASAP. Thanks also for your effort in giving us a lot of valuable information! 🙂

[Keith Taylor]

Great! Let us know what happens next, Cindy.

You’ve probably attracted a million lurkers to this topic, with similar concerns about blood glucose and allopurinol. So, they’ll all be anxious know what to do next.

[Cindy]

We went see a different dr. yesterday & she prescribed 200mg Allopurinol. Just wondering if this is too much to start with?

[Keith Taylor]

Cindy, do you have Han Chinese, Thai, or Korean ancestry? If so, you should talk to your doctor about a genetic screening test before starting allopurinol. Also, I believe the starting dose should be 50mg or 100mg daily.

[Cindy]

My husband’s been on Allopurinol 200mg for about 1 month & he did a blood test again, the results are very encouraging! 🙂

Uric acid: 0.407mmol/L (0.543 before)
Glucose: 5.9mmol/L (6.39 before)

So it seems that the blood sugar is also much better now.

He is now starting Allopurinol 300mg & will go for another blood test in a month; hopefully, he can get to the “safe level”.

BTW, regarding Keith’s comment about the genetic screening, we didn’t do that; because we don’t see the very bad rashes as described by the Hypersensitive syndrome. We shall continue with the blood test & watch the uric acid, blood sugar, liver & kidney functions closely.

Thank you Keith for your good heart & hard work in keeping the website! Truly I’ve learned a lot in treating my husband’s high uric acid & the non-stop gout flares since Oct. last year. We are happier now because we know at least this illness can be “managed”. 🙂

[Keith Taylor]

Cindy, it’s great to read that your husband’s allopurinol treatment is going well. So, I’m looking forward to reading more about his successful gout recovery in the next few months.

Especially thanks for your kind words. Because that’s another quote for my Testimonials collection. Which makes it all worthwhile.

How do you test for high uric acid and high blood sugar?

[Cindy]

My husband did a blood test On May 15, 2017, after being on 300mg Allopurinol for a month now.

The result is so much better encouraging! 😀
I’ll give a summary below:

Date Allopurinol Uric Acid(mmol/L) Glucose(mmol/L)
Feb 18 no allopurinol 0.543 6.39
Mar 15 200mg
Apr 1 200mg 0.407 5.9
Apr 12 300mg
May 13 300mg 0.252 😎 5.3

Now my question is: how long should my husband stay on 300mg Allopurinol before we can switch down?

[Keith Taylor]

Wow Cindy, I’m doing a dance of happiness for Mr Tang! 😀

The time between allopurinol dose increases is variable, depending on how quickly the doctor and patient wish to proceed. Coincidentally, I read a report earlier today where a doctor said change after one week was usually OK. But, I prefer a more cautious 2 weeks.

From what I’ve read, most patients seem to wait a month before increasing allopurinol dose. Also, I think anything longer than 6 weeks is too long. Because, it suggests a lack of urgency.

However, the most important thing is to check kidney function, and liver function when uric acid is tested. So, once the tests have proved OK, the allopurinol dose can be increased as soon as the test has been checked. But, if kidney or liver shows abnormal trends, the dose can be maintained or reduced.

To conclude, I think, if liver and kidney functions are OK, increase allopurinol now. Then, test again in 2 to 4 weeks. Otherwise, your doctor should assess your husband’s results carefully.

[Cindy]

Keith, my husband has switched from 200mg to 300mg one month ago, & his uric acid went from 0.407 to 0.252, do you think he should increase the allopurinol dosage? Or he should keep with the 300mg for a month or two & see if the uric acid is ok? So far the kidney & liver functions are both ok with each blood test.

[nobody]

Hi Cindy,
I know you asked Keith but if those were my tests, I would not increase the dose.
But tests are not the only reason to increase a dose. If the flares are not improving, that would be one of the reasons warranting a dose increase. In my opinion, frequent but short (typically lasting less than a day) and mild flares moving from one location to another can be a sign of improvement and do not count as a reason to increase the dose.
And in answer to your earlier question, I would wait at least two more months before lowering the dose. Again, the symptoms matter as well as the tests.

[Keith Taylor]

Thanks for your quick response Cindy. Also, even bigger thanks to nobody for a terrific answer. Because, medically, we have established that Mr Tang is safe to proceed. But, all treatment plans have to balance risk and reward.

So, at this stage Cindy, I don’t have enough information to recommend exactly when your husband should increase his allopurinol dose. Furthermore, in an ideal world, we would not even be discussing this. Because, target uric acid levels and timescale should be discussed between patient and doctor before allopurinol therapy starts. But, in the real world, we tend to make these decisions as we go. Which is why I said in my previous reply: “The time between allopurinol dose increases is variable, depending on how quickly the doctor and patient wish to proceed”.

For example, in my case, I had a particular medical situation that supported the idea of moving forward as quickly as possible. Also, I had a supportive doctor who agreed that it would benefit me to get to maximum allopurinol dose as quickly as I could. As long as function tests raised no alarm bells.

So, as nobody advised: “tests are not the only reason to increase a dose.” Therefore, I can only repeat, I don’t know enough about your husband’s situation to decide if it’s good to increase now or later.

I hope my comments, and nobody’s, give your husband enough ideas to discuss his situation with his doctor. But, if he’s not sure what to ask, I would always suggest thinking hard about what he truly wants to achieve now. Also, think about any important events in the near future. Because, vacations, family celebrations, etc can often influence our timetable. Then, he should have enough to explain what he wants his doctor to do.

If not, I’m sure we can come up with more suggestions.

[Cindy]

Thank you both nobody & Keith!

Since starting Allopurinol in March my husband had just 1 minor gout flare up which subsided in about 1 day. And I can see that the once swollen big toe part is now slowly shrinking. I think Allopurinol is clearly working in lowering the uric acid.

As his latest reading is 0.252, I think we will keep on taking Allopurinol 300mg for 2 more months & do another test. Since the result is really encouraging & there is one point that keep us hesitant in increasing the dosage is because my husband is having tinnitus since starting Allopurinol. Of course all the readings & even dr. said the medicine is the not cause, but we don’t know … 😕

[Keith Taylor]

That sounds like a good plan, Cindy.

On the issue of tinnitus, you’ve prompted me to review my information. But, I can’t find any more references to allopurinol and tinnitus. So, I added your case to the list at the end of Gout Drugs & tinnitus. As you can see, I don’t know if this is a side-effect, or just a coincidence.

[Cindy]

Hi all,

It’s been a while since the last update, my husband did a blood test on Jun 10 & the result is shown below:

Date Allopurinol Uric Acid Glucose
(mmol/L) (mmol/L)
Feb 18 no allopurinol 0.543 6.39
Mar 15 200mg
Apr 1 200mg 0.407 5.9
Apr 12 300mg
May 13 300mg 0.252 5.3
Jun 10 300mg 0.379 5.7

It seemed that we got too happy with the previous result & relaxed a bit, hence the rise in Uric Acid again 😳 Good news, however, is his liver function test has lowered to normal range.

He will do another blood test in August, I shall update again later.

[Kelly]

High level of uric acid

Hi I had blood work done last month. I had a positive ANA. My GP sent me to a rheumatologist which did more blood work and X-rays. I had high total crating cremate and high uric acid 8.8mg/dL. She didn’t seem concerned at all. She said to decrease my protein and that was it. I have constant joint stiffness and a lot of pain in the morning until I get limbered up. Your web site caught my attention and kind of gave me a scare. What do you think should be my next step?

[Keith Taylor]

Hi Kelly,

Besides suing your rheumatologist, I recommend my recent Stages of Gout Recovery: Your 6 Step Plan. Your GP should be able to prescribe allopurinol as I described in that article. But if you want to consider alternatives to allopurinol, we can discuss that first.

As far a positive AntiNuclear Antibodies is concerned, the American College of Rheumatology advise that a single positive test result is no cause for concern. #However, you should ask your GP about getting retested.

[Kelly]

So can high uric acid cause pain in all joints or just the big toe? She did ask if my big toe was hurting, which it isn’t. The joint pain and stiffness is why they ran a bunch of test. It seems to be worse if I have an asthma attack.

[Author]

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