Reader: During his health check-up, he found that his uric acid level was two numbers higher than the normal range. He doesn't know if this means he has gout, or if it's related to drinking soy milk.
Tong Tong: If this level continues to rise, it could lead to a gout diagnosis. After being diagnosed with gout, it is indeed advisable to eat fewer soybean products, as they are high in purines, which can increase the body's uric acid levels. However, it's not necessarily because of drinking soy milk that gout develops. The cause of gout, besides some people's congenital defects in purine metabolism, is more related to lifestyle. Like diabetes, it's considered a lifestyle disease. People with gout are often overweight; obesity contributes to gout, which is directly linked to today's high-calorie diet.
Gout was once known as "the disease of royalty," first appearing in Western courts. This was because the intake of fish, meat, eggs, dairy, and animal fats in Western courts was higher than among the common people, representing the luxury of court life. It was precisely these rich foods that led to gout, making it a "disease of wealth."
More than a decade ago, this disease was rarely heard of in China. Its high prevalence is related to our gradually Europeanized diet and increasing calorie intake. It's worth noting, however, that Chinese courts seldom had such a "disease of royalty" as gout. While the imperial Chinese diet was exquisite and elaborate, it was not high in calories. For example, shark fin, bird's nest, tremella, and various delicacies from mountains and seas all had lower calorie content than the diet in Western courts. This is also why gout did not occur in the Chinese imperial court, which from another angle confirms the rationality of the Chinese diet and the health of our ancestors' eating habits.
Switching to the present day, if you are a person who lives healthily and has a normal weight, unless you have a hereditary metabolic disorder, you generally will not develop gout from drinking soy milk every day. The lifestyle treatment for gout is not to avoid soy milk, but to reduce high-calorie foods and lose weight. Sometimes, when your body fat decreases, your gout indicators will also drop accordingly.