Treating Gout

Find cures for gout pain, clear info about conventional and natural remedies both to relief the pain as for preventing future attacks.

What is gout?

Gout is an inflammatory joint disease and happens to be the most painful of all arthritis types. This pain is caused by needle sharp uric acid crystals that build up in and around the joints where they cause swelling, redness and the specific immense gout pain in the joints.

These gout crystals build up when the kidneys can’t properly eliminate the uric acid in the blood. Uric acid occurs in every human being as a waste product when the body breaks down purines. Purines are part of the genes of all living cells. Certain foods that happen to have a high protein content, also contain elevated levels of purines (like yeast, organ meat and mussels).

Gout attacks

It can take more than 20 years of high uric acid bloodlevels (hyperuricemia) before you suffer your first attack:
when a joint gets extremely painful and is diagnosed as being gout (after a sample of the joint fluid clearly shows the crystals). The pain usually lasts 3 to 10 days.

The disease comes is categorized in 4 possible stages:

  1. high uric acid levels in the blood without any effect nor symptoms on any joint
  2. an acute and extremely painful joint inflammation
  3. a period of no further pain nor symptoms. When you don’t follow any gout remedies and you ignore your diet of gout, your will get a new attack (back to stage 2) that will be more severe and will happen more frequently.
  4. in this advanced stage you will suffer constant pain and symptoms due to the crystals that have formed into lumps and bumps around your joint, partly deforming that joint (chronic tophaceous gout: the lumps are called tophi)

75% of all gout attacks happen in the big toe and can become so painful that even the normal pressure of your bed sheet will cause an intolerable pain. Acute gout remedies comes in the form of NSAIDs, corticosteroids or colchicine (autumn crocus). Whatever you do, don’t take Aspirin as Aspirin slows down the excretion of uric acid through the kidneys.

Who gets Gout?

The most affected are men between 40 and 50 years of age. People are more likely to develop gout when:

  • gout runs in the family
  • they are obese
  • they frequently eat and drink purine rich foods like organ meats, sardines, anchovies, meat extracts, dried peas, lentils and beer
  • they use medications like:
    • diuretics (they pass the fluids out of your body faster without passing equal amounts of uric acid),
    • salicylates like aspirin,
    • vitamin B3 (nicotinic acid vitamin, niacin) to lower cholesterol and
    • those used to lower your immune system or prevent rejection of transplanted organs

Symptoms and Diagnosis

Gout occurs too fast to notice: there are no visible symptoms that will alert you. You can go to bed feeling fine and wake up during the night because of an excruciating pain. Some people do experience joint swelling and shiny red or purple skin around the joint prior to the attacks.

The only way to diagnose this form of arthritis accurately is by examining the synovial fluid taken from the affected joint. When urate crystals are found, you will be diagnosed with gout. However when calcium pyrophosphate crystals, you have "false gout" or pseudogout. There is no diet that will prevent pseudogout from happening less.

Change your lifestyle when treating gout

Every gout sufferer should seek professional treatment. When nothing is done, the disease will progress to stage 4 where serious joint damage will cause disability. Treatments aim to prevent further attacks to happen by reducing the level of purine in your blood by:

  • avoiding purine rich food
  • taking medicine to lower the amount of uric acid in the blood
  • taking medicine to increase the excretion of uric acid by the kidneys
  • changing your lifestyle and improving your overall health: especially obese people are more at risk for further attacks.