You go to bed feeling pretty good and you are looking forward to a good night's sleep. Suddenly in the middle of the night you are awaken with a very intense pain in your big toe. You are not only experiencing severe pain but your big toe is very swollen and very red. You have just had your very first bout of gout. The thing about gout is very seldom does it give you any warning. It just kind of sneaks up on you and blindsides you. Is there anything you could have done to prevent gout?

How do you get gout? After your first attack this question will definitely be on your mind. first it would be a good thing to know exactly what gout is. Gout is a very painful form of arthritis. For some reason more men than women are afflicted with this ailment. Gout usually doesn't strike until middle age which make sense when you are asking the question "How do you get gout"? Gout occurs when there is a build up of uric acid in the joints. This acid crystallizes around the joints and causes severe pain. This does not just happen overnight it takes a while for this to take place.

Uric acid in our body has some benefits but like many things too much is not always good as in the case of gout. Usually our bodies filter out the excessive uric acid and when this takes place we do not have a problem. So another answer to the question how do you get gout would be when your filtering system of your body does not perform properly. This would mean that you are having problems with your kidneys as they are the filtering system of our body.

There are various reasons why a persons kidneys may not be function up to par but one of the main reasons is weight. People who are overweight tend to put extra pressure on their kidneys and therefore they can not perform as well as they should. So if you are looking in the mirror and you are seeing an overweight person staring back at you, you may have part of the answer to the question "How do you get gout".

Another aspect to look at is your diet. Overweight people tend to eat diets that are high in fat and purines. These fats and purines can cause an excessive amount of uric acid to form and if not filtered out then it will form crystals around your joints causing you a bout of gout.

So if you have had gout and you are still pondering how do you get gout start looking at your diet and be prepared to make some serious life style changes.