I spoke to an acquaintance of mine who had just returned from a golfing holiday in Thailand and asked him how his golf went. “No good” he said. “I only played six holes on the first day and my knee was playing up so much I couldn’t play golf for the rest of the trip”. Uric acid and too much sugar What’s the problem I asked; and he replied “I think it’s an old sporting injury it’s not a big problem but this time it was really bad; I’ve been to see the Doc and he tells me it is a Uric Acid problem and I have to get some medicine for it.” I told John that Uric Acid causes gout, so he had better get off the booze; but it turned he didn’t drink. So I suggested he get off the sugar, because sugar metabolism, like alcohol, can also produce Uric Acid. He responded that he didn’t eat much sugar, and upon questioning it sure sounded like he didn’t each much sugar. So I sat in the chair thinking to myself, (Ok, John cuts my hair, and eyebrows, and trims my ears, when it starts falling out of our heads it starts growing everywhere else we don’t want it to). So where else could the Uric Acid be coming from? The most common natural food source of sugar is fruit, and sugar produces Uric Acid. “Do you eat much fruit?” I asked John. He replied “I love my fruit, I eat two bananas and three Wilson pears a day”. I suggested he quit fruit for a week and see what happens; my next hair cut (eyebrow and ear trim) was free, because his knee problems were fixed in a few days. Problem solved John tells me he still loves and eats his pears and bananas, but he doesn’t eat as much as he used to and rarely has a problem; but sometimes he still does and in his words “then I remember what you said” he quits for a couple of days and gets back to eating less fruit and the knee problems go away. John’s Dicky Knee is really special, and it has dawned on me how lucky he is to have it. Most of us can consume as much sugar as we like without pain or symptoms; the first we might find out about it is when the Doc tells us we have Diabetes or Cardiovascular Disease; worse still our first warning may even be a heart attack. Now I think how lucky John is to have his “Dicky Knee”, it tells him when he is overeating sugar, and pain is a really good incentive to cut back. Australia would be healthier nation if everyone had John’s Lucky Dicky Knee! Cheers Glenn.