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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

You should be very careful on carb restriction. It can cause acid levels to build up in your blood which can be exceedingly dangerous. One side effect: the acids can crystalize in your bloodstream and collect at your joints. In short, you get gout/pseudogout/other gout-like conditions (depending on the exact composition of the crystals).

I know someone who did this; she was bedridden for a month and couldn't turn her head for 2 months.

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There is a very important book you should read called _Life Without Bread_. It was that book that showed how excessive carbohydrates causes gout, and how that led my husband (who has gout at 30 b.c. of an immuneoresponsive issue) to cure his gout with low-carbohydrate diet.

Now -- anybody who does "no carb" is making a big mistake. Vegetables, and legumes, etc., are a very critical part of the diet. They provide so much more than carbohydrates, such as fiber and necessary acids.

And sometimes shit just freaks out. Like me, I have "steroid psychosis" type responses to very low levels of non-oral steroids. Sometimes you just have to accept that you're a freaky outlier. Plural of anecodate is not data, sadly, either way.

I've actually never heard of hyperuricemia being caused by carbohydrate restriction. Nobody seems to list it in the standard "drink your Coke, low-carb kills" list of warnings, either.

Anyway, here's Taubes on Gout: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/10/05/gout/

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