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.
I am age 55 and have suffered from gout for 8 years. I have NEVER been on preventative meds such as allpurinol or probecinid as I have an aversion to drugs.
In the beginning, I suffered gout in my feet (mainly big toe) a few times a year. In 2010, I quit drinking beer as my doctor said there is a lot of prurines in beer. I switched to wine. In July of this year, I completely quit drinking. My gout attacks are worse than ever. Before I quit drinking, I had episodes of gout in my elbows, hip, knees and hands. Gout attacks would last up to two weeks. I have also developed tophies in my fingers and toes. Slowly but surely, the gout is damaging my joints. The last attack I had before I quit drinking was in February 2013. Now I have a gout attack in both hands that started at the end of August and is still present. The gout attack then spread to my left foot and is still severe--going on almost 2 weeks.
Over the years I have tried everything imaginable to get rid of the gout. In the beginning, cherry juice usually worked wonders. Now it does nothing. I have been on cherry pills for the last several years and they really don't do anything either. I have modified my diet to exclude ALL gout inducing foods. I have increased my intake of water. I have tried drinking a tincture of apple cider vinegar and baking soda. I have soaked my feet and hands in vinegar and epsom salts. I have added apples, cucumbers and celery to my daily diet. NOTHING IS WORKING! I am currently on crutches and have been housebound for almost 2 weeks. I feel like my gout is NEVER going to go away.
Is anyone at my stage of gout? Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can eradicate this once and for all?
PS. I finally agreed to go on preventative meds. My doctor said I cannot go on meds until this attack is gone as meds will only aggravate it and make it worse.
In the beginning, I suffered gout in my feet (mainly big toe) a few times a year. In 2010, I quit drinking beer as my doctor said there is a lot of prurines in beer. I switched to wine. In July of this year, I completely quit drinking. My gout attacks are worse than ever. Before I quit drinking, I had episodes of gout in my elbows, hip, knees and hands. Gout attacks would last up to two weeks. I have also developed tophies in my fingers and toes. Slowly but surely, the gout is damaging my joints. The last attack I had before I quit drinking was in February 2013. Now I have a gout attack in both hands that started at the end of August and is still present. The gout attack then spread to my left foot and is still severe--going on almost 2 weeks.
Over the years I have tried everything imaginable to get rid of the gout. In the beginning, cherry juice usually worked wonders. Now it does nothing. I have been on cherry pills for the last several years and they really don't do anything either. I have modified my diet to exclude ALL gout inducing foods. I have increased my intake of water. I have tried drinking a tincture of apple cider vinegar and baking soda. I have soaked my feet and hands in vinegar and epsom salts. I have added apples, cucumbers and celery to my daily diet. NOTHING IS WORKING! I am currently on crutches and have been housebound for almost 2 weeks. I feel like my gout is NEVER going to go away.
Is anyone at my stage of gout? Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can eradicate this once and for all?
PS. I finally agreed to go on preventative meds. My doctor said I cannot go on meds until this attack is gone as meds will only aggravate it and make it worse.
I do use a CPAP machine every night like painfree suggests, but so far, no help there. I sleep between 10 and 12 hours a night. Do you think I could be sleeping too long, painfree?
Eleni, if you have health insurance with prescription coverage, ask your doc if he thinks Lidoderm patches would help with the pain (they're pretty pricey). I put one on my foot last night and the pain is subsiding somewhat. There's no telling, though, if it's the patches or if the attack is subsiding on its own.
I do have a question though. Before my first gout attack, I had been having my sweat smell like amonia for almost a year. Do you think there's a connection? I googled sweat smells like amonia, and it said it is very common in body builders. Only I'm about as far from "body builder" as you can get. I don't eat a lot of protein, and don't exercise. Just wondering.
I hope your attacks are few and far between dear. Nobody should have to suffer like that.
74 years of age and my first attack this April, lasting about a week.
Painful as hell, the VA DID help - as usual.
So, my sympathies...
An idea.....
We seem to suffer this gout in our large toe..
Why?
For many of us, this area receives little to no exercise..
Few of us are dancers, like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly...those who dance on their toes, I am envious of..
The VA recommends as much as 128 ounces of water, daily..
You know, much of the water we do drink is utter crap...this may even be the problem for many of us...bears looking into...
The gout attack did strike when I was supposed to be asleep.
So, this too bears looking into.
Gout is so painful and such a PITA that I would look into anything and everything !
Exercise , with the pain from gout ?
I walked on the infected foot and my observation was that this "no-no" actually lessened the pain ! no easy task, as one could imagine .. .. ..I think that since exercise does improve blood circulation, and better circulation can "rinse away" the acid......and I am doing this at the age of 74...
There is so much to do and time is getting short !
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.