00:00Recently, hospital emergency rooms across China have been flooded in the middle of the night.
00:05Not heart attacks. Not accidents. Gout patients, men in their 20s, even teenagers,
00:13screaming in pain because their big toe feels like it's being stabbed with a red-hot poker.
00:18Nearly 200 million people in China have hyperuricemia. That's one in every seven people.
00:25And more and more of them are young, fit, healthy people who don't drink, don't eat seafood, and work out
00:32every day.
00:33Because two-thirds of your uric acid doesn't come from food.
00:37It comes from your own cells dying and being recycled.
00:41You think it will just pass.
00:43But those crystals are quietly eating your bones.
00:47And their next stop is your kidneys.
00:49Where do these crystals come from?
00:51And why do they always strike at 3 a.m.?
00:55This isn't random.
00:57During the day, your body is warm.
01:00Warm blood acts like a boiling pot.
01:03It keeps the uric acid dissolved.
01:06But when you lie down to sleep, your body temperature drops.
01:10The uric acid crystallizes into needle-sharp shards that embed themselves into your joint spaces.
01:16For 7 to 8 hours of sleep, you don't drink a single drop of water.
01:21Your blood gets thicker and thicker, like a pot boiling overnight.
01:26Why the big toe?
01:28Because it's the farthest point from your heart.
01:31By the time blood gets there, it's already cold.
01:35There's almost no muscle on your toe to keep it warm.
01:38So the first crystal always strikes here first.
01:42Now here's what really gets me.
01:44Not the pain, but the people who get ambushed without ever touching alcohol or seafood.
01:50A food blogger went to the hospital feeling perfectly fine.
01:54He ordered a sweet drink on the way in.
01:57His uric acid level came back at 560.
02:01The normal maximum is 420.
02:04The thing that broke him was that innocent-looking milk tea.
02:07It's not the milk.
02:09It's not the tea.
02:11It's the fructose.
02:1430 to 40 grams of it in a single cup.
02:17About 8 sugar cubes dissolved into one drink.
02:21Fructose charges straight into your liver.
02:24Your liver cranks out massive amounts of uric acid as a byproduct.
02:28But it gets worse.
02:30Fructose also creates lactic acid.
02:34Lactic acid and uric acid share the same exit door, your kidneys.
02:39The lactic acid blocks the door.
02:42More production, less elimination.
02:45Of course your uric acid goes through the roof.
02:48What happens if you ignore high uric acid?
02:51The crystals keep accumulating.
02:53They push through your skin, forming hard bony lumps on your fingers and toes.
02:59This is gouty tophus, eating your bones from the inside.
03:03Then the crystals move to your kidneys.
03:06Kidney stones, then kidney failure, dialysis for life.
03:10And uric acid corrodes your blood vessels, raising your risk of heart attack and stroke.
03:16But here's the good news.
03:18Uric acid is one of the few things in your body that you can actually fix yourself.
03:23Drink more water, until your urine runs clear.
03:27That's the single most powerful thing you can do.
