There are many different names used to describe the crystallized uric acid compound in your body - Uric Acid Crystal, Urate Crystal, Uric Crystal, Monosodium Urate (MSU), etc. All these are actually referring to the same chemical compound that triggers the painful inflammation (usually on big toe) known as gout.
Every day, there are billions of body cells die in your body, and the DNAs are broken down to xanthine and hypoxanthine (which contain the purine ring) and sent to the liver to be further broken down to uric acid and then sent to the kidneys for disposal.
Uric Acid is a chemical compound that has very low solubility, this means it has very low saturation point which is 0.416 milli mol/L. Just in case you have forgotten your high school chemistry, Saturation Point is level of concentration beyond which a substance cannot be absorbed by the liquid solution. The solubility of this Gouty Acid is about 50 times lesser than salt in the same solution. When the concentration of the uric acid at certain parts of your body goes beyond the 0.416 milli mol/L point, urate crystal will start to form.
In most other mammals there is another enzyme known as Uricase which can further degrade the uric acid to a more soluble substance known as allantoin. Allantoin is extracted from the urine of mammals and use as raw materials for many cosmetics products. The existence of the uricase enzyme in carnivorous mammals such as dog, cats, and tiger is the reason why you never heard these animals have gout problem not matter how much high protein meat they eat. It is just impossible for uric acid crystal to form in these animals.
Where Does These Crystals Form In Human Body?
There are 3 places where the uric acid crystal tends to form in your body - joints (especially big toe), the kidneys, and underneath the skin (tophus). Please note that it is impossible for the crystal to form in the bloodstream because if it does, it will block the fine blood capillaries which will cause stroke or heart attack. This is why your kidneys cannot cope with the work load of excreting the waste products, your body will try its best to throw the Gouty Acid out from the bloodstream into the interstitial fluid and synovial fluid (joints).
Urate crystal tend to first form in the joints, then follow by the kidneys and if the hyperuricemia condition remains unchanged for years, this will forces the Gouty Acid to move towards the surface of the skin and form some white color cuticles which will grow bigger to become tophi. Some tophi will burst out from the skin and the milky fluid which contains the crystals will flow out from the leakage. Your body is desperate to throw away those unwanted urate crystals.
Normal surgical operation can only remove the bigger and visible kidney stones (which is and combination of urate crystal and calcium oxalate) and the grown up hard tophii. But there is millions of fine tiny urate crystals scatter all over your body. There is no surgical operation available to remove these micro crystals and none of those gout drugs can do that too.
"How It Comes, How It Goes"
Since these notorious urate crystals appears from the fluid that contain them, then the only effective way you can get rid of them is by "melting" them. Turn your body fluids to alkaline, and that will increase the solubility and the ability to dissolve those urate crystals. Simple science always works better than complicated drugs.
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