The Fast, Full & Fresh Gout Blog

GoutPal’s 2010 gout blog celebrates 5 years of gouty arthritis help, advice and news.

GoutPal will help with your gout diet, give advice about gouty symptoms, and tell you about new treatments for uric acid problems.

This blog is your place for gout news. Not just the latest gout treatment and remedies news, but all new information that affects gout sufferers and their carers. It includes:

• New ways to get gout help
• New information to understand gout
• New guidelines distilling the ever-increasing knowledge-base built by the GoutPal community.

This blog introduces you to new information in key gout sections:

Read the rest of this entry »

Even if you do not suffer from any other poor health condition, gout alone is hard to understand. Though the experts call this “uncomplicated gout”, it is far from simple. If you have other conditions as well, such as high blood pressure (hypertension), kidney problems (renal insufficiency), or heart problems (cardio-vascular disease), then you are in a place that even qualified professionals find hard.

So how can free gout guides from a layman help?

I am a fellow gout sufferer with an addiction to finding out as much as I can about gout. Unlike most doctors, I have felt the fierce stabbing pain of gout. I have felt the frustration of not understanding gout advice.

Continue reading about Free Gout Guides

Popular Remedies for Gout Prevention

There are lots of different remedies for gout that are used in the various treatments.
Remedies are applied as part of different treatments, which are described in the Medical and Alternative Treatments sections.
The remedies that are listed here are for preventing gout or reducing the risk and severity of future attacks.
I’ve listed pain management remedies in the Pain Relief Gout Remedies section.

In this section, both medical and alternative remedies are listed, including gout home remedies and natural gout cures. Please note that even though alternative remedies may not be as tightly controlled as most drugs, they can still have significant effects on your health, especially if you are also taking prescribed medication. As always, you should consult a qualified medical practitioner before you start the treatment.

Before you start to decide which treatment might suit you, you should know your uric acid level. Also, you must be clear about why and how to lower uric acid, and what you need to reduce it to.

To choose which remedies are best for you, you should study them, noting particularly any side effects. You should also pay attention to how gout remedies react with other conditions and with other remedies.

What are your best remedies for gout?

This graph shows recent voting results.

Voting is now closed, but will re-open late 2010. Subscribe to the free gout update service to learn when voting starts again.

Remember, popularity is only a guide – you should study gout remedies as they apply best to your own situation. In particular, pay careful attention to possible side effects and other conditions.

Remedies for Gout Prevention

For the latest remedies for gout, please see:

Gout Medicine

As our knowledge of uric acid responses and pain pathways grows, new targets for gout treatments are evolving.

Gout Home Remedy Research

Natural substances that are currently being investigated for gout treatment potential.

Febuxostat Lowers Uric Acid

Lower Uric Acid

Febuxostat is hailed as the new millennium’s gout wonder drug.

The first new gout drug in 40 years.

But is it any good?

This new treatment for lowering uric acid has been trialled extensively throughout the world.

The last two years have seen a raft of trial results published, and gradual adoption by health authorities in different countries.

It has been marketed under the brand name Adenuric, or Adenuric TMX-67, and most recently, in the US as Uloric.

FDA acceptance marks a significant milestone in the acceptance of this new gout treatment. It’s manufacturers gained the confidence of the FDA in November 2008, when they recommended approval based on extensive febuxostat research. From February 2009 it will be marketed in the US as Uloric.

The most significant aspect of Uloric is it’s use when allopurinol cannot be tolerated. Lowering uric acid is crucial to gout sufferers. Anything that helps gout patients to lower uric acid is a very very good thing.

Just as with allopurinol, you are likely to need pain relief until all uric acid crystals (urate) in your body have dissolved. Once the treatment has rid you of urate build-up, you can continue to take it daily, and live a gout free life

If you use Adenuric, or Uloric, or have opinions about using it, please join the febuxostat debate.

Please see febuxostat in the Gout Treatment section for latest information.

When looking for good gout diet foods to eat, do not forget the drinks. We all know that hydration is good for gout sufferers, but how about coffee – will it bring better hydration and lower uric acid? I have republished the following article as part of my ongoing website maintenance. Coffee and gout will move to the Gout Diet Foods To Eat pages within the Gout Diet Section.

Coffee And Gout

Coffee Consumption Lowers Uric Acid

The link between coffee and gout has been the subject of a number of gout and uric acid studies.

There seems little doubt that there is a link, but more research is needed to try and determine just what that link is.

Like all statistical studies, gout sufferers need to be wary of the latest studies on gout and coffee. They only show that there is a statistical chance that drinking coffee will lower uric acid.

Of course, lowering uric acid is vital to control gout, and so this research is vital. However, you should be most concerned with your own uric acid level and how you might reduce it below 6mg/dL (350 µmol/L) or even below 5mg/dL (300 µmol/L) if you have tophi, or a few years history of gout.

Whether drinking coffee will do this for you depends entirely on your own circumstances. Frequent uric acid measurement will give you the best clue as to the effect of coffee on your own uric acid levels.

Learn more about Coffee and Gout

Gout related research from Y P Siu and colleagues, Use of allopurinol in slowing the progression of renal disease through its ability to lower serum uric acid level,[1] investigates the use of allopurinol in patients with high uric acid levels and impaired kidney function.

They recognized that high uric acid levels (hyperuricemia) is associated strongly with the development of high blood pressure and kidney disease. As allopurinol decreases serum uric acid levels, they hypothesized that administrating allopurinol to decrease serum uric acid levels to the normal range in hyperuricemic patients with chronic kidney disease may be of benefit in decreasing blood pressure and slowing the rate of kidney disease progression.

They conducted a randomized controlled trial with 54 patients with high uric acid levels and chronic kidney disease. Half were treated with allopurinol tablets (100mg to 300mg per day), and half continued with normal treatment.

See the results of the Allopurinol Tablets & Kidney Disease study

Gout Research

Facchini’s research, Near-iron deficiency-induced remission of gouty arthritis., was published in Rheumatology (Oxford) in December 2003.

The researcher’s goal was to investigate whether or not iron removal would improve the outcome of gouty arthritis in humans. They aimed to lower iron levels, but not to the point of anemia.

Continue reading about Alternative Treatment For Gout