Gouty Arthritis Section

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

I first published the following article about the individuality of gout in my first newsletter back in November 2006. You may have noticed a lack of GoutCaster issues recently – they simply take more time to write than I have available. If you have some free time, and would like to consider writing an issue, please contact me on the GoutPal Contact Form.

I have learned a lot about gout in the intervening years, and some of the references to causes and triggers are a little out-dated now, but the principle “To Each Their Gout” remains true. In a perfect world, I would not have bothered with the “joke” based on the French for bread being pain, but life is not perfect.
Read why the motto is To Each Their Gout.

The short answer is – gouty arthritis is just another way of saying gout.

It is interesting to look a bit deeper. Why, when the two terms mean the same, do I use different terms at different times?

Gout is clearly the most common term, but the correct medical term is gouty arthritis.

I use the term gout mostly, and in my experience, most doctors do the same. It is shorter, more common, and most people recognize it as a medical condition that involves painful joints.
Continue reading to learn why it is important to know what gouty arthritis means.

Regular readers will know I am at the early stages of a campaign to improve uric acid testing procedures. I will explain the flaws in current procedures in more detail when I launch that campaign. They include:

• Failure to identify at-risk gout patients and apply an annual test schedule
• Failure to recognize the importance of testing frequently during urate lowering treatment
• Most importantly, failure to understand that the labs statistical assessment using a mathematical model of normal distribution does not mean that “normal” uric acid levels are necessarily healthy [1]

For my campaign to be most effective, I need facts. Now is the time for all gout sufferers to pull together and let the medical profession know clearly where they have to improve procedures. With your help, I can compile the information we need to ensure the campaign spells out the extent of the problem, and the simplicity of the solution.

In short, I need your latest blood test result.

Now, I do not want you to share confidential medical information. I am collecting the information anonymously. Having said that, I have put the poll and surveys in the members area of GoutPal Interactive to protect them from Internet spammers. I’m still looking at ways of making access available to everyone without registering, but I suspect that the registration process is our best chance of keeping the information as clean as it can be.

Please help the cause by:

1. Reading the discussion guidelines, especially the gout debating guidelines and the gout poll guidelines.
2. Read my introduction to the debate on Uric Acid Blood Testing, adding your comments and opinions where applicable.
3. Complete the polls and surveys referred to in that debate.

Please complete the poll even if you have not had a uric acid test, if you are a gout sufferer or suspect you may have gout. I am very interested in learning about difficulties people have in getting this simple test, so please join the debate to explain your situation.

Uric Acid Blood Test References

1. A normal distribution is:
   

   The usual “bell shaped” distribution which may or may not be due to Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777-1855. Called “normal” because it is similar to many real-world distributions. Note that real-world distributions can be similar to normal, and still differ from it in serious systematic ways. …

   ciphersbyritter.com/NOISE/NOISGLOS.HTM

Almost a year ago, I committed myself to a long-haul plan to help you on your way to Gout Freedom.

Here is a heads up for any gout sufferer planning a uric acid blood test. It is also highly relevant to anyone who has had a test because of sore joints, but cannot get treatment because they are labeled “Normal.”

I am about to introduce a new campaign for better uric acid testing, and I will be looking for volunteers to help me organize and promote that campaign.

Before I start that, I need your help getting some clear facts to support the campaign and highlight the problems associated with getting accurate, timely uric acid test results. If you have ever had, or think you are entitled to, a uric acid blood test, I need your input.

I also need your input if you are on any kind of uric acid lowering gout medications, including allopurinol, febuxostat (Uloric® or Adenuric®), or probenecid.

Finally, if you have ever used a uric acid tester at home, please prepare to give me a few simple facts next week.

Continue reading First Step To Gout Freedom – A Uric Acid Blood Test

Like any good website owner, I review statistics about topics that visitors are most interested in. I have listed some of these below, but they are far from the whole story.

The list of gout topics to improve is a fallback for me, if nothing more immediate needs doing. Quite often, I break from this list to investigate and summarize a gout news story. More often, I prioritize gout topics that arise in the gout forums. However, the topics that always get top priority are the ones that you ask me to write about.

More about your involvement in a moment, after the list.

Gout Topic Improvements

My current “hitlist” is in alphabetical order:

• alkaline foods
• arthritis facts
• causes of gout
• diet for gout
• febuxostat
• foods to avoid with gout
• gout
• gout cause
• gout diet
• gout pain
• gout pictures
• gout remedies
• gout symptoms
• gout treatment
• gouty arthritis
• high uric acid
• hyperuricemia
• indocin
• indomethacin
• joint inflammation
• low purine diet
• natural gout remedies
• protein rich foods
• pseudogout
• purine
• purine rich foods
• purines
• uloric
• uric acid crystals
• uric acid reduction

I tend to work on this list in the order that my statistics say is most important. But the overriding factor is what is most important to you.

I want you to feel that GoutPal gives you all the answers you need to give you your Gout Freedom. This can only happen if you tell me which gouty topics you want me to improve next.

It can be something on the list above, or a different gouty topic that means something to you. Either way, together we will continue to improve this unique gout support service.