Obesity obstacles: Why do obese people have gout? ?
With a unique distinction of being one of the most frequently recorded medical illnesses, gout is characterized by sudden, severe attacks of joint pain with redness, warmth, and swelling in the joints. Obesity is a common cause behind gout, promoting it especially within the first phase of arthritis. Let’s take a look at why obese people eventually suffer from gout.
Why overweight people are more prone to developing gout:
Gout is highly common in obese people. The logic is simple: If you are overweight, you are putting extra pressure on your joints. This causes chemical changes in your body. Thus, it is believed that a fat person is four times more likely to get gout than a non-obese person.
People with high BMI readings also have higher uric acid levels, which eventually increases the risk of gout. This is because people who are overweight have high levels of uric acid in the blood, which sometimes forms solid stone or crystal masses, deposited in the joints, thus, propagating gout.
Obesity also heightens other risk factors for gout such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, insulin resistance and high cholesterol. And obesity increases stress on joints
, exacerbating the pain and inflammation that accompanies gout.
Another interesting finding related to gout and obesity is that people who were obese in early adulthood developed gout earlier than those who became obese later.