A year on from my last annual gout blog review, and I have made many improvements.

Welcome To GoutPal’s Goutorium

Gout Symptoms Dept.

Gout Treatment Dept.

Gout Diet Department

Understanding Gout

Understanding Uric Acid

Gout Related

Gout Reception

Mostly, I have made steady progress to organizing gout information better. The biggest change for 2012 recognizes the growing amount of information about gout. I realize that the number of gout and uric acid pages may well top 1000 in 2012, and I need to organize different gouty arthritis topics to reflect that.

Let me introduce the new GoutPal Goutorium. This is the knowledge-base of all gouty arthritis information, with revised sections for Gout Symptoms, Gout Treatment, Gout Diet, and some supporting sections. I am changing Sections to Departments, and re-grouping pages within each department as appropriate. Continuing the Goutorium theme, subsections will become Wards.

Each Department and each Ward will have a blog, providing supporting information, and each Department will be supported by a forum. For gout sufferers or their carers who want to improve their personal knowledge, I will introduce Gout School. At Gout School, you can learn about any particular Ward that interests you, or study an overview of each department. Gout School will also allow you to monitor personal progress on Department Personal Progress Charts.

For example, the Gout Symptoms Department, will contain information on the Gout Symptoms, Gout Causes, and Gout Diagnosis Wards. There will be Gout Symptoms Personal Progress Guidelines that you can use with your doctor, or alongside friends from Gout School, or the Gout Symptoms Forum. This allows you to easily find relevant information to help you understand your doctor’s advice, and know what questions to ask, and how to ask them, so you get the best help and support.
Continue reading about the improvements to GoutPal.com for 2012

Regular readers will have noticed an upsurge in the number of tophi pictures here.

Most are quite horrendous, but I make no apologies for warning of the dangers of untreated gout. If you are in the unlucky position of having gout, you have all my sympathies. Until you experience that agony of a gout flare, you never truly understand gout. Yet we often bury our heads, and leave gout untreated for years.

Is it fear of daily meds? Is it lack of understanding? Is it simply that we cannot tolerate a cure?

Despite the advances in science that mean we can now control gout, there is a tiny minority who cannot tolerate common uric acid lowering treatment. If you do not get uric acid to safe concentration, you are doomed to continuous growth of tophi. You might treat the pain, but can you control the gout?

Pain relief without uric acid control means more and more uric acid crystals that will eventually show themselves as gouty tophi.

Continue reading about the best tophi picture

Today is a great day for passing on the thanks from many gout patients who have resolved their gout.

I speak of resolving gout, as it cannot really be cured. Medics speak of controlling gout. I often speak of fixing gout, or finding gout freedom. There are a few cases of secondary gout, i.e. gout caused by another health condition or it’s treatment. In these cases, curing the underlying condition may well cure the gout, but for most of us we cannot expect a cure.

I do not think that matters. What matters to me is that, with a simple treatment program (or occasionally a complex treatment program), we can live an active life, free from pain, and free from the fear of pain.
Continue to read how the gout forum team help resolve gout

One of the most popular topics on the gout forum is about massage and gout.

It started with a forum member asking:

A couple times I have massaged the toe joint and it felt like perhaps I was able to break up the crystals a bit. Not sure if that can really happen or if I imagined it. So, my questions are: 1) can you really break down the crystals by manually massaging the joint? 2) if so, should you? Would that help break it down and assist in the process or is it doing more harm than good?

Inevitably, as forum discussions tend to do, there is talk of supporting the gout massage with hot baths, which in turn leads to discussion of what to put in the bathwater. But this misses the fundamental question: does massage help gout, or will massaging gout cause more problems?
Click to discover the dangers of misunderstanding gout and massage

Before I begin, this is not one of my explanation articles. It is more a quest to clarify how you think about alcohol related to gout. As such, I will not be referring to specific gout research, though I may mention some facts or views in general terms. Once the issues are clarified through better forum discussions, I may publish specific guidelines based on medically acceptable evidence.

I have started reviewing the gout forum discussions about alcohol related to gout, and the situation is not good. Everybody seems to want to jump on the bandwagon and express their own feelings about alcohol. Often these bear no relationship to gout.

The biggest danger is from people with an alcohol fixation, or even a dependency. This is quite outside the scope of a gout support service. If you have health issues with alcohol, these need to be dealt with in conjunction with your doctor or a suitably qualified clinic.

Assuming you simply want to enjoy the social pleasures of alcohol, but worry about the effect on your gout, then you must be clear if you are worried about your symptoms, treatment, or diet.
See how to determine the best alcoholic beverage for gout

We have discussed cod liver oil and gout occasionally in the gout forums.

It has never been clear to me why people take diet supplements when they have no idea if they help or hinder. Cod liver oil is one such supplement. Gout sufferers ask if it is good or bad. It is not exactly a hot topic, so when I could find no easy answers, I moved on to more pressing matters.

As I have said many times before, it is futile to consider one food item and its effect on gout. You must assess your total food and drink intake, including any supplements, and see if there are weaknesses that may hinder your gout treatment. This worry about single food items, or a small group, is particularly futile if you do not have a gout management plan.
Continue reading how to manage cod liver oil and gout

Over the years, there have been several investigations into the properties of onions. Today, I present three brief investigation introductions, and I will create a more complete review for the Gout Remedy Reference pages soon.

Onion Anthocyanins Gout Remedy

Anthocyanins are commonly believed to be the reason why cherries and black been broth helps gout sufferers. As I was researching these plant compounds, I came across an investigation into the role of anthocyanins in medicine^[1].
This investigation includes a small mention of onions in conjunction with other plant sources:

Various products of vegetable origin may be a source of these compounds, particularly fruits of aronia, black currant, raspberry, grapes, apples and also tomatoes, onion, garlic, hawthorn.

See two more investigations of onion as a gout remedy

When researching uric acid & diet, fructose keeps getting a mention, but never clearly.

With the publication of a recent review of the effects of fructose on uric acid in gout diets, I am pleased to see that the lack of clarity is now official. Whilst it does not give us a clear picture, at least it is enough to send some snake-oil salesman packing.

There has been a rash of pseudo-scientific reports recently claiming that fructose is the root of all gout problems. This untruth is used to sell various products and reports that are designed to make money from gout sufferers. The science was never clear, but the charlatans presented it in a way that would convince many people that their products or reports had some merit.

Continue to find the truth about Uric Acid, Diet & Fructose