Gout Support Group
Gout is a form of arthritis caused by the accumulation of uric acid crystals in joints. It is an intensely painful disease, which in most cases affects only one joint (monoarthritis), most commonly the big toe. The classic picture is of excruciating and sudden pain, swelling, redness, warmness and stiffness in the joint. Low-grade fever may also be present.
*these are the 2 drugs (brand name that is) I was prescribed....at about $400/month
Then I found these guys.....saved a ton of cash and later cured myself....have made 6-7 orders with no issues
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Colchicine (generic Colcrys) 0.5 mg tablets @ $68.29 per 100 tablets
Allopurinol (generic Zyloprim, Aloprim) 100 mg tablets @ $38.20 per 90 tablets
Most of what you hear about gout is that uric acid crystals cause it from purines in foods. The fact is, if you have gout attacks it’s too late, there is little you can do about it with diet. I did a 450-day study testing the correlation between daily purine intake, blood uric acid levels, and level of pain. Each test lasted from 10 to 20 days having the exact same diet every day during the test. I ingested from 10 purines/day to 800, taking anywhere from two to eight uric acid blood samples/day and cataloging the purines vs. uric acid level vs. pain. Over those 450 days, the gout pain went from 0 to 10, lasting from five to 30 days. Bottom line, yes, there was a direct correlation between my purine intake and uric acid blood levels, but no correlation between the uric acid levels and a gout attack. I also did a 15-month test of Allopurinol; the first three months it lowered my uric acid level, but after that it went back up.
Realizing that diet had no effect on gout, I took another route—trigger point therapy. Being interested in alternative therapies to disease (since I organized the American Holistic Dental Association in 1980) I found trigger point therapy useful for relieving shoulder and back pain—so I thought that maybe it would help with gout pain. By the way, gout pain IS bone joint pain that can occur in any joint in the body, but usually in the lower legs and feet. But before getting into resolving your gout, you need to know what causes it—the series of events that lead to a full-blown gout attack.
A gout attack takes days for that minor pain to elevate to excruciating pain, inflammation and swelling. An attack starts out with a little pain or numbness, say in the big toe. Then that pain increases, causing the immune system to send blood and fluids to the area, causing swelling and tophi, the deposit of crystalline uric acid and other substances at the surface of joints, causing greater swelling, redness and increasing pain. You can use drugs and ice baths or removal of the tophi from the joint, but the best way to relieve that slight pain or numbness before it escalated into a gout attack using trigger point therapy.
Due to your daily habits you fatigue certain muscles that develop trigger points. When a muscle’s sarcomeres are shortened, but do not relax back to their normal longer state, a trigger point is created. This shortened muscle pulls on it's ligaments, pulling the bone joint it is attached to out of position and bone on bone pain. In order to get that joint back into a normal state, the trigger point needs to be erased. This is done by applying pressure on the shortened sarcomeres. This pressure, which crushes the sarcomeres back to their natural length, can be as painful as the gout itself. Fortunately, if you can get make it through that pain for about 10-20 seconds, the gout pain will eventually be eliminated, but it will take numerous 10-20 seconds sessions to do it over days or weeks. But once the initial trigger point is erased, erasing it in the future is much less painful and relieved in minutes, if not seconds. But, you have to be aware that a trigger point is re-developing, by being aware of the pain developing in the joint that muscle is attached to. If you wait too long, the more painful it will be to erase it. Trigger point therapy has been around for many decades, but the best reference I have found is The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook third edition that you can get at Amazon or most bookstores. What also helps is riding a stationary bicycle for 5-10 miles a day to strengthen the leg muscles to avoid fatigue and trigger points.