Gout Treatment Blog Section

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

In my gout pain relief pages, I try to explain a good approach to gout pain.

The main difficulty with stubborn gout pain is, it rarely responds to a simple treatment. Usually you need a combination of more than one gout pain relief. Often these combinations need to include general pain killers that are not specifically for gout.

Colchicine For Stubborn Gout Pain Relief

Gout pain, as I explain in the Understanding Uric Acid pages, is a result of the immune reaction to invading uric acid crystals. When the immune system becomes overwhelmed, it calls in reinforcements, and this process is at the heart of the agony we experience during an acute gout flare.

Colchicine is very effective when it is taken early enough. That is why doctors advise you to take it at the first sign of a gout flare. They also advise you to take it to prevent, or limit, gout flares when you take uric acid lowering gout medications.

Colchicine works to prevent gout pain, or prevent it getting worse, by slowing your immune system. White blood cells are restricted from growing, and this limits the inflammation that is part of that process.
See why you may need more than colchicine for stubborn gout pain

For many years I have tried to produce a comprehensive review of apple cider vinegar for gout. I have finally given up, for a very simple reason.

Despite the high level of interest amongst gout sufferers for ACV (Apple Cider Vinegar), there is absolutely no scientific information to say that ACV is good for gout. Having said that, there is no evidence to say it does not work. There is just no information.

The only mentions of apple cider vinegar relating to gout or uric acid, are only acknowledgments that many people believe that ACV helps gout followed by declarations that there is no evidence for this.

I am intrigued that such strong support for the benefits of apple cider vinegar can exist alongside zero evidence, but there are three explanations of how this may happen.
what are explanations for The Apple Cider Vinegar Myth?

The debate continues to rage about heat or ice for gout relief.

There is no doubt that ice relieves swelling. There is no doubt that an acute gout flare causes painful swelling. The big question is: does the beneficial aspect of inflammation control from ice, outweigh the risks from lower temperatures?

There are several references to ice as a gout pain relief treatment in medical literature. One researcher has suggested that ice treatment can even be used to differentiate between gout and other forms of arthritis^[1]. In that investigation, patients suffering from proven gout, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and other forms of inflammatory arthritis were asked to report if ice treatment helped them, or made pain worse. The claim is that cold will help gout pain, therefore it is a useful addition to gout treatment.

But is short-term pain relief the only factor?
Read why ice for gout is not good gout relief

Reviewing some naproxen information today, I’m reminded of the serious nature of getting the right gout cure for pain.

Though due for an update after 4 years, my Gout Pain Treatment Guide is still very relevant. However, I remembered an important fact today that really needs to be considered if your doctor suggests steroid treatment.

“But what has that to do with naproxen?” I hear you ask. Nothing directly, except that both act to relieve inflammation, and both are commonly prescribed for curing gout pain. Naproxen is a member of the family of drugs known as NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs). Ibuprofen and indomethacin are common alternative NSAIDs, both of which are common gout pain treatments.
Continue to read why naproxen for gout is safer