What is the best diet for people with gout? Undoubtedly, it’s a low purine diet. What kind of diet is that? Basically:

• Avoid or limit fish;
• Avoid or limit red, organ meat;
• Avoid or limit beer, lager, etc;
• Avoid products containing brewers yeast.

For more information about diets for people with gout go here.

Comment:

Cool weblog! During gout attacks, no medicine really works for me! It's a matter of bearing it. My gout has hits me hard - physically, mentally and emotionally! Surprisingly, the symptoms start when I drink a lot, but other than that nothing! I was thinking the other day, this disorder has got to be genetic related in most cases, I lead a healthy lifestyles – no heavy drinking or over-eating but I still developed gout. Special diet for me really helps. Surfing other websites keeps me up-to-date about gout! Organized and nicely designed. Mr Ferguson

Gout Pain Treatment - Can Eating Cherries Provide Gout Pain Relief? I've never had gout and I hope you haven't either but I do know that gout is one of the most painful conditions known in medicine. What’s the cause of gout? Our blood contains a salt called uric acid.

Uric acid is there all the time in everyone’s blood but is normally fully dissolved in the way that sugar is fully dissolved in a hot cup of tea. But, if that tea cools down? What happens to the sugar? It comes out of solution as little sharp edged crystals. Well, guess what - that's exactly what happens in an attack of gout pain.

The treatment of gout is usually built around using anti-inflammatory medicine when the gout pain or gout inflammation is bad and – sometimes – by taking gout prevention treatment in the form of a daily tablet or syrup. But what about natural gout pain treatments? Are there other ways to treat gout pain apart from strong modern medications?

This story is true! I’d never heard of cherry juice or fresh cherries as a treatment for gout pain until I heard it recently from a patient. This man had been told it by his pharmacist, who had heard it from a relative, who had … well, you get the picture don’t you!

Anyway - a quick search for the "treatment of gout" on Google turned up one (rather ancient -1950) research paper and a whole stream of anecdotal reports about the positive effect of cherries and their juice. It seems that consuming about half a pound of fresh cherries a day or half a liter of fresh cherry juice can significantly lessen the pain and swelling of gout.

If you suffer from gout pain then you might want to try kind of treatment yourself. I'm not clear whether tinned cherries can have the same effect on gout pain as fresh cherries but it’s probably worth a try if you can’t easily find the fresh varieties.

I have found nothing published to suggest that taking regular cherry juice lessens the risk of you having an attack in the first place but if you suffer from gout regularly it may be worth a try. Cherry juice, cherry pie, ice cream with cherry sauce? Mmmm – that sure sounds good to me!

Dr Gordon Cameron MD is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Joint pain, arthritis pain and frozen shoulder are among his areas of special expertise. He has published an excellent electronic book called How to Live with a Frozen Shoulder and is a regular contributor to magazines and textbooks.

You can visit Dr Cameron's website for more information about whiplash injury and the treatment of gout.

Gout joint pain can being debilitating, so here’s some gout relief remedies I have found while surfing the ‘Net.

• Some sufferers have found soaking the affected joint in a nice warm bath helps.
• Cortisone is often used by doctors to dampen swelling and tenderness.
• NSAIDs are a common pain killer used to control gout pain.
• Nutricol may be helpful in improving circulation and limiting inflammation.
• Febuxostat is a recently approved drug that purportedly lowers uric acid blood levels.
• Increase fluid intake. Drinking more water helps dilute the level of uric acid in the bloodstream and therefore may help in excretion too.
• In some cases homeopathy has been used successfully to treat gout.
• Reduce consumption of purine rich foods and drinks.
• Colchicine is traditional gout treatment. It blocks inflammation caused by uric acid crystals.
• Allopurinol is conventional treatment that reduces the amount of uric acid produced by the body.

If you have any personal gout relief ideas, email them to me! Indeed, I will include them on this site to share them with others in a similar plight.

The link between stress, disease and worsening symptoms has been observed for a long time. Consider this excerpt:

Stress is an everyday fact of life You can't avoid it. Stress is any change that you must adapt to, ranging from the negative extreme of actual physical danger to the exhilaration of falling in love or achieving some long-desired success. In between, day-to-day living confronts even the most well-managed life with a continuous stream of potentially stress¬ful experiences. Not all stress is had. In fact, stress is not only desirable but also essential to life. Whether the stress you experience is the result of major life changes or the cumula¬tive effect of minor everyday hassles, it is how you respond to these experiences that determines the impact stress will have on your life.

Sources of stress: You experience stress from four basic sources –

1. Your environment bombards you with demands to adjust- You must endure weather, pollens, noise, traffic, and pollution.
2. You also must cope with social dressers such as deadlines, financial problems, job interviews, presentations, disagreements, demands for your time and attention. and loss of loved ones.
3. A third source of stress is physiological. The rapid growth of adolescence, meno¬pause in women, illness, aging, injuries, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, and inadequate sleep all tax the body. Your physiological reaction to environmental and social threats and changes can also result in stressful symptoms such as mus¬cle tension, headaches, stomach upset, and anxiety.
4. The fourth source of stress is your thoughts. Your brain interprets complex changes in your environment and body and determines when to turn on the "emergency response”.

How you interpret and label your present experience and what you predict for the future can serve either to relax or to stress you. Interpreting a sour look from your boss to mean that you are doing an inadequate job is likely to be very anxiety provoking. Interpreting

Chronic stress and disease: Chronic or persistent stress can occur when the stressors of life are unrelenting, as they are during a major reorganization or downsizing at work or while you are undergoing a messy divorce or coping with a chronic or life-threatening illness. Chronic stress also occurs when little stressors accumulate and you are unable to recuperate from any one of them. As long as the mind perceives a threat, the body remains aroused. If the stress response remains turned on, you may be increasing your chances of a stress-related disease.

Researchers have been looking at the relationship between stress and disease for over fifty years. They have observed that people suffering from stress-related disorders tend to show hyperactivity in a particular "preferred system." such as the skeletal-muscular, cardiovascular, or gastrointestinal system. For example, evidence shows that chronic stress can result in muscle tension and fatigue for some people. For others. it can contribute to stress tension - migraine headaches, ulcers, or chronic diarrhea. Almost every system in your body can be damaged by stress. Suppression of the reproduction system can cause amenorrhea (cessation of menstruation) and failure to ovulate in women, impotency in men, and loss of libido in both. Stress-triggered changes in the lungs increase the symptoms of asthma, bronchitis, and other respiratory condi¬tions. Loss of insulin during the stress response may be a factor in the onset of adult diabetes.

Stress suspends tissue repair and remodeling, which in turn causes decalcification of the bones, osteoporosis, and susceptibility to fractures. Inhibition of immune and inflammatory systems makes you more susceptible to colds and flu and can exacerbate some diseases such as cancer and AIDS. In addition, a prolonged stress response can worsen conditions such as arthritis, chronic pain - and diabetes. There is also some evi¬dence that the continued release and depletion of norepinephrine during a state of chronic stress can contribute to depression.

The relationship between chronic stress, disease, and aging is another area of research. Experts in aging are looking at the changing patterns of disease and the emer¬gence of degenerative disorders. Over just a few generations, the threat of infectious dis¬eases such as typhoid, pneumonia, and polio have been replaced with such "modem plagues" as cardiovascular disease, cancer, arthritis, respiratory disorders such as asthma and emphysema, and a pervasive incidence of depression. As you age normally, you expect a natural slowing down of your body's functioning. But many of these mid- to late-life disorders are stress-sensitive diseases. Researchers and clinicians are now asking how stress accelerates the aging process and what can be done to counteract this process.

From The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook by Martha Davis, Matthew McKay, Elizabeth Robbins Eshelman

Which are the best Pain-Killers for Gout Relief?

This study compared the effectiveness of several NSAIDs.

A single-blind, randomized, controlled trial to assess the efficacy and tolerability of rofecoxib, diclofenac sodium, and meloxicam in patients with acute gouty arthritis.

Cheng TT, Lai HM, Chiu CK, Chem YC.

Section of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taiwan, Republic of China. tiantsai@ms2.hinet.net

BACKGROUND: Acute attacks of gouty arthritis are characterized by the rapid onset of severe pain, swelling, and erythema of the affected joint. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are considered the drugs of first choice for treating acute gout. Rofecoxib is a specific cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor, which has demonstrated analgesic efficacy in the setting of acute pain. Whether it is effective in the treatment of acute gouty arthritis remains to be evaluated.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy and tolerability of rofecoxib compared with diclofenac sodium sustained release (SR) and meloxicam in the treatment of acute gouty arthritis.

CONCLUSIONS: In this study of patients with acute gouty arthritis, rofecoxib 50 mg once daily provided more effective treatment than diclofenac sodium SR 150 mg and meloxicam 15 mg administered orally once daily for 7 days in > or = 1 efficacy assessment of overall analgesic effect on day 3 or day 8. Rofecoxib achieved a rapid onset of pain relief, demonstrating significant improvement 30 minutes after dosing. All of the regimens appeared well tolerated in the population studied.

Study link: gout relief study.

About 2 per cent of patients taking allopurinol will develop an allergic rash with the drug which will usually subside on with¬drawal of the drug. Sometimes, the rash does not recur when the allopurinol is given at a slightly lower dose, although this lower dose may be less effective in controlling the hyperuricaemia.

Other side-effects, commonly referred to as a general hypersensitivity, are much more serious and may even be life-threatening. These often include fever, dermatitis (with loss of superficial skin), liver disease, and inflammation of the kidney with rapid deterioration of kidney function.

This hypersensi¬tivity reaction may come on suddenly and be unpredictable. It can occur with other drugs and will often subside more rapid¬ly if treated with prednisone.
Which patients are likely to develop this side-effect cannot be predicted in advance, although there is some suggestion (which is not universally accepted) that the risk is greater if the dose of allopurinol is high or if the patient has renal disease or is taking diuretics. One needs to remember that allopurinol's effective¬ness in the presence of renal disease is one of its advantages. Still, the risk is small and serious hypersensitivity reactions occur in less than one in 10 000 patients taking allopurinol. The risk is slightly increased if the patient is taking the antibiotic ampicillin at the same time.

As with other allergic states, desensitisation to the drug may be undertaken for minor allergic side-effects, such as an itchy rash, although it is rarely undertaken and rarely successful for major sensitisation which involves kidney or liver disorder, with a fever. The success of desensitisation is unpredictable and it may be hazardous if the underlying hypersensitivity reaction was serious or life-threatening.

This puts into perspective my earlier comment that the use of a drug or medication is a balance between the good it does and the harm it may do. In most cases, the good outweighs the harm, but some potential for harm is always present with any effective medication and this harm will vary with the drug and with the individual patient. Thus a gout patient with renal disease would respond less well to a uricosuric drug, making allopurinol the drug of choice with the dose adjusted to renal function, but there is a slightly increased risk of drug hypersensitivity. In a patient with a known history of allopurinol hypersensitivity, a uricosuric drug would usually be needed.

However, if that patient had previously had renal colic from a renal calculus, there would need to be great caution in the administration of a uricosuric drug: to reduce the risk of further uric acid crystal and renal calculus formation it should be given only if the patient could consistently maintain a urine volume of at least 2500 mL per 24 hours and if that urine could be kept slightly alkaline with sodium bicarbonate.

Getting Rid of Gout - B. Emmerson