Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) - food additive

[lux]

Hi, I'm 28 and get gout attacks about 2-3 times a year and it started about 3 years ago.

I’ve stopped eating a lot of meat and shellfish (prawns) etc and been eating a lot more steamed veges and sometimes I still find that I get gout attacks.

I haven’t had a bout of gout for about 1.5 months and the last time I had it for only 2 days, thankfully. Recently, in the past week and a half, I’ve eaten a lot of meat and prawns, but I haven’t felt any tingles or anything.

I’ve always suspected that it wasn’t meat that triggered my gout attacks but I had suspect for a while now that, for me, it might be my MSG (food additive) intake. I remember most times I’ve had gout was when I have MSG rich foods (eg Asian takeout or instant noodles or other instant food) the day before.

From my readings about gout, it involves monosodium urate crystals, does anyone know if there is a connection between these monosodium urate crystals and the food additive Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)?

Has anyone the same experiences or can anyone recall if they had higher intake of MSG before gout attacks?

Thanks

[Lao-miner]

I would be interested to hear if anyone has any info on this I live in Laos and MSG is hard to get away from , I would like to blame my attacks on MSG but i suspect its probably self inflicted from the amount of (excellent i might add ) Beerlao i consume

[podagra]

There does not seem to be any connection at all between sodium urate and glutamate. However, if your Asian takeout includes shrimp, that can well trigger an attack.

Given your extremely young age of gout onset, if I were you, I would make sure that I had gout. Do these factors trigger your attacks?
http://www.goutonline.net/showthread.php?t=10782

Do you smoke? what is your uric acid?


The few cases of gout that I've seen in people that young involve one of these
1) Heavy smokers-drinkers
2) People with both the genes for gout and hemochromatosis (a common hereditary disease that affects 1 in 200 people and causes severe iron accumulation that bring about gout prematurely).
3) People with lead accumulation

A ferritin and serum iron test or a genetic test can tell you if you have hemochromatosis, in which case blood donation will treat both the gout and the hemochromatosis, which untreated will cause cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease and many other complications.
check out this thread.
http://www.goutonline.net/showthread.php?t=10755