Do you enjoy BBQ meat together with alcoholic drinks? Nutrition experts advise that one should limit his/her alcohol intake while taking a lot of BBQ meats. During barbecue process, heated food produces a carcinogenic ingredient called “heterocyclic amine compound”. In addition, barbecue food such as mussels, scallops, crabs, animal offals, bacon, beef, pork, lamb and other red meats are high in purine, which may form uric acid in our body. When the uric acid in blood is high, it will likely develop chronic hyperuricemia(excess of uric acid in the blood) and gout.

Gout symptoms can be easily triggered when taking excess alcoholic drinks while eating seafood and meats. Normally, most daily uric acid disposal occurs via the kidneys. Alcohol causes the kidneys to excrete alcohol instead of excreting uric acid, when the uric acid in the blood exceeds a certain degree of solubility, it will be deposited as urate crystals around the cartilage of the joints. Urate crystals may cause inflammation and swelling around joint area. Many people wake up in the middle of the night after a big meal and find out that their toes and fingers are swollen with severe pain. This could be explained as acute gout attacks.