Starting Allopurinol

[Cal]

I have suffered from 4 attacks of gout, the current ongoing has been 13 days long. I have been prescribed Allopurinol to help lower my Uric Acid as clearly my diet change and drinking less wasn’t enough. As soon as I had a bad week the Gout flared up. Has anyone had an experience with long attacks? Will the allopurinol now help with this attack. He also prescribed Naproxen for the inflammation and suggesed paracetamol for pain. I am 29 so was reluctant to start on Allopurinol but it seems a drug was needed.
What other things do people do or eat to help with it?

[nobody]

Hi!

There are lots of things people do. So it would be time consuming to get into all of them… care to be more specific?
The most important things in your situation are to take enough Naproxen that it gets rid of the inflammation in less than a day (that’s not always possible but it usually is that simple) and to make sure these drugs aren’t going to harm you. And how do you do that? You make sure you are scheduled for a blood test, that you understand your past blood tests and that you have discussed how to dose your drugs with a doctor (or possibly pharmacist) who has a clue (change doctors if need be)… and finally, you pay attention to how various parts of your body feel.
Also, make sure your doctor wasn’t negligent when they suggested paracetamol (some people shouldn’t take that because of the side effects, and in my experience most doctors don’t care).

Yes, many have had experience with longer attacks than 13 days.

Allopurinol will probably not help with this attack but you should keep taking it anyway. If you want opinions about whether allopurinol was right for you, you’ll have to disclose a lot more information.

[Cal]

What foods should I make sure I comsume to help?
I am not scheduled for another blood test and the dosage was 100mg Allopurinol. He did not say I would need to increase this or that I would need more tests, just that my previous levels were 0.43 per litre and apparently that’s the high end of normal which shows I definitely had an attack.
Do I need to be asking for more tests and how often?
Thanks

[nobody]

Assuming you don’t have a disease such as a kidney problem which would make the following recommendation dangerous, the main thing you need isn’t actually a food but lots of water. So I suppose foods containing lots of water would be advisable but you might as well eat whatever and make sure you drink plenty of the stuff.
The most important thing when it comes to food is to avoid sweeteners and diuretics and since the main ones in many (most?) diets are drinks and additives, I would recommend sticking to water, produce and products made only with basic ingredients you understand (ingredients should be printed on the box or can but if you’re not baking/cooking for yourself, you’ll have to ask the cook/baker).
Otherwise the basics of diet are: no corpses, yeast or single-celled algea. Some shrooms are OK but you should know your shrooms or stick to plants. The ideal protein source is dairy (ideally relatively low-fat products such as skimmed milk or cheeses which aren’t made with cream).
I must again stress the above isn’t suitable to everyone and the diet you should follow depends more on your other medical issues (including ones you aren’t aware of) than on the notion that you might have gout. Even if you know for a fact you have gout, what you eat is typically not what drives the evolution of the disease (it matters, but not as much as people often assume).

How frequently you should get your blood tested depends on your medical history but the average might be around 3 weeks after you started allopurinol. If there’s no red flag in that next test, the subsequent ones needn’t be so frequent as long as no major dose adjustments are required.

0.43 what per litre? If I’m guessing right, the number doesn’t show anything on its own. In combination with information you didn’t share such as precise symptoms and the results of older tests, it might at best suggest you could have had an attack. But of course you might be talking about something else than my guess…

[Author]

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