About GoutPal.com
GoutPal.com is the personal website of Keith Taylor, a gout sufferer since 2001.
I provide help to fellow gout sufferers and their carers by explaining what gout is, how it can be managed, and how you can work with medical professionals to get the best treatment for your gout.
I study gout research and professional advice, but I have absolutely no medical training or qualifications. You should always seek medical advice from a suitably qualified professional.
Brief History
Around the year 2001, in my early forties, I started to experience various aches and twinges around my feet. On reflection, I experienced quite a lot of tingling “pins and needles,” but put this down to restricted leg movement, approaching middle-age, too much entertainment.
One day, my ankle became so swollen I could hardly walk, so I consulted my family doctor. He said,
“It looks a bit like gout, but it can’t be because your big toe is fine. Go for x-rays, and we’ll take it from there.”
And so it came to pass, in the Emergency Room, the finest medical brains were at a loss, and I was admitted to hospital for tests to rule out infection etc.
Four days later, a rheumatologist performed a joint fluid test, and the results soon came back. Gout.
On return to my family doctor, I got some anti-inflammatories, a recommendation to try to control the gout through diet changes instead of daily drugs (these docs know how to make a forty-two year old feel ninety), and a food list calling for an end to all high-purine foods and restriction of many other medium purine foods, including spinach and mushrooms.
To be fair, this was prior to the research that shows that vegetable purines have little or no impact on gout, but I began to feel like the world as I know it had ended.
I spent 5 years researching gout to try to understand it. All I really did was convince myself that nobody understands gout.
I found that the science I was following was not reflected in most health sites, and gout sites were all about selling herbal nonsense. So, I decided to start GoutPal both as a way to focus my learning, and as a haven for other gout sufferers.
There have been many changes over the 5 years that GoutPal.com has operated. I’ve learned a lot, and I know that I will learn more. Along the way it has been refreshing to hear that several gout patients now understand what their doctors are saying, and know what questions to ask them as a result of my work here.
That, my friends, is all I ever want.
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