Can fitness in the gym easily lead to high uric acid levels

Gym fitness itself will not directly lead to an increase in uric acid, but wrong fitness habits may indeed increase uric acid levels and even induce gout attacks.

My previous practice of doing leg squats was a typical one. In order to keep up with the progress of fat burning in the summer, I did 1 hour of heavy strength training every day for two months. I supplemented protein at 3g per kilogram of body weight. I ate boiled shrimp + skinless chicken drumsticks every meal. I felt too white during the training. The water was tasteless, so I drank all the sugary energy drinks, and I didn’t even have time to drink water. As a result, my body fat had just reached 12%, and my ankle suddenly hurt so much that I couldn’t walk. I went to the hospital to find out that the uric acid spiked to 560, and I was directly diagnosed with acute gout, and I stopped practicing for less than half a year.

In fact, I really can’t blame fitness itself. I also know many friends who have critical uric acid levels. I follow the coach to do a step-by-step combination of aerobic + strength training. I usually take the initiative to drink two sips of warm water halfway through the training, and do not deliberately stop drinking. The uric acid level has dropped by more than 200 in the six-month review, which is even more stable than the metabolic level of ordinary people.

To put it bluntly, uric acid is the end product of purine metabolism. About 70% of the purine in our body is produced by our own metabolism, and the remaining 30% comes from food. During normal and regular exercise, the body's metabolic efficiency is steadily improving, and the production and excretion of purines can be maintained in a balanced state, so there will naturally be no problems. However, if you suddenly engage in ultra-intensity anaerobic training, muscle cells will be decomposed in large quantities, and endogenous purines will increase sharply in a short period of time. If you sweat more and drink less water during training, the amount of uric acid excreted with sweat is limited, and there is not enough urine to help metabolism, and it will pile up in the blood.

Not to mention that many people feel "exhausted and need to replenish" after working out, so they turn around and drink cold beer, or eat high-purine foods such as animal offal and seafood in order to build muscle, which adds an additional burden of purine to the body. Not to mention people who work out, even ordinary people who sit for a long time every day can easily develop high uric acid after eating this way.

I have seen many fitness bloggers say before that "as long as your metabolism is fast enough, you can metabolize any amount of high purine you eat." This is actually only half correct. If you are susceptible to weak uric acid metabolism, no matter how good your fitness habits are, a large intake of high-purine foods + high-intensity exercise at one time will have a high probability of inducing uric acid fluctuations. Clinically, there are even cases of gout attacks in people who have been working out all year round the day after finishing a competition.

Anyway, I have been practicing for the past four or five years, and among my friends who insist on scientific fitness, almost no one is troubled by high uric acid. On the contrary, it is the novices who are eager for success and either train hard or take supplements that are most likely to fall into the trap. Fitness is to help us adjust our bodies. Don’t just pursue the numbers of weight and body fat. If you ignore the metabolic endurance, you will lose more than you gain.