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My buddies mother (who doesn't know I have gout) sent me the following email yesterday:
“…come over for our annual Christmas Eve dinner. All seafood. Squid, haddock, smelts, shrimp, anchovie rolls,etc. Pasta and all kinds of desserts. Dec. 24th at our house!”
Thank goodness for AP! I'm there!
Hi cjeezy,
How is your foot doing now….it is close to 4 months of AP….do you still get the occasional pains and uneasiness? Any updates on your SUA levels and gout condition in general?
Hi Utube,
I havent tested my UA in about 2 weeks so I did this morning (after fasting). I was at 4.4. I've been on AP for almost 4 months, however only on 300mg for about 2 months. I still have general soreness everyday (knees, bottoms of my feet, elbow) but it is more of an annoyance than a problem. I have resumed going to the gym and I heavy weight train 4 days/wk and walk and or jog 1-2 miles/day. Overall I have returned back to my normal lifestyle (pre-gout lifestyle that is) with the exception I have only eaten red meat twice in the past 4 months. I feel pretty good but still hope that the general soreness will eventually subside. How's your treatment going?
Hi cjeezy,
Good to know you are back to normal routine.
I am also on AP for 4 months and 300 mg for 2 months. I now tested SUA once in 10 days in last one month. My home test on Monday showed values of 3.4 and 4.0( I generally test twice to ensure consistent values) while my lab test 2 weeks back showed 4.3. So, I guess, SUA levels are around 4. All were tested before lunch time with 4 hrs gap after breakfast.
I have also resumed near to normal. I am brisk walking mostly 3-4 miles a day about 5 days a week( 15-20 miles a week). I am still restricting my meat intake and no drinks yet……
I still have issues with the foot pain when I walk without wearing the sleeve. It pains a bit when my toe gets bent upward suddenly(like uneven road bump)….The bunion joint that seems much larger before and tighter has improved, getting almost back to normal shape and getting free( almsot 70% free)…All the pains are related to walking that makes the toe bend upward though the severity has reduced….and that's what it had been from beginning….
All the doctors I have shown ( 3 of them) are unanimous in decision that it is due to toe injury(bumping) that has reduced the gap in the joint slightly……The Xrays though do not show any abnormality…So, I am hanging in there and waiting for the foot to become pain free….hopefully, it wiil someday….
That's great o here your UA levels continue to be low! As far as the drinks comment, I'm am sure you will be fine if you had a few. I've already had a 3-day vacation of drinking beer and extensive walking, and aside from a little soreness (probably from the walking). I was fine. In terms of your residual pain, 3-4 miles/day seems like quite a bit of walking to me. Did you ever think of cutting back to maybe 1-2 miles/day to see if it helps the healing process?
cjeezy said:
My buddies mother (who doesn't know I have gout) sent me the following email yesterday:
“…come over for our annual Christmas Eve dinner. All seafood. Squid, haddock, smelts, shrimp, anchovie rolls,etc. Pasta and all kinds of desserts. Dec. 24th at our house!”
Thank goodness for AP! I'm there!
I hope you get to wash it all down with several pints of good strong ale: a Purine-Fest, all you are missing is Sweetbreads ala Francaise!
(Betcha you feel some toe twinges the next morning even WITH allopurinol!
)Sounds really delicious.
Seriously though, it is so good to hear that you both are doing so well on 300 mg. allopurinol, a real wonder drug.
Personally, I have gone on a high beer diet since Thankgiving (until New Years day when I always teetotal until April 1…Yuengling Black and Tan this months fave) and have decided to add another hundred mg. making my dose 400 mg./day this month. Lucky I have several bottlefuls of 100's still around.
After a few days of beer I can STILL detect that certain toe tingle and discretion IS the better part of valor.
zip2play said:
Post edited 3:24 pm – December 3, 2009 by zip2play
I (Betcha you feel some toe twinges the next morning even WITH allopurinol!
)
Haha. I actually think most of that stuff is pretty gross so I wont be partaking in all of it. On another note, I have pains that come and go for a few seconds at a time in different joints on and off every single day. Not sure if these are considered twinges but I don't take Colchicine when they happen (actually I'm not sure what type of twinge at this point should be given Colchicine). I have however eaten a very large seafood dinner and washed it down with beer while walking miles and miles and did not feel anything the following morning (maybe I got lucky). In fact I tested my UA levels that same evening a few times and the odd thing was they ranged from 4.3- 4.7 so I still don't understand this wntire gout thing.
Picture an area that is 100% urate…a tophus in your foot. With a low SUA there is still a war zone at the border with pure crystals mixed with old pus and partially walled off urate…PARTIALLY. Occasionally there's a break and more crystals are exposed and some dissolve but some are attacked by white blood cells and re-walled. This can go on for days, weeks or years depending onthe structure and amount of the crystallization and the level of SUA and the doggedness of the immune system. It can take a long time to resolve the war.
I recognize what you mean when you say foot twinges that last seconds or minutes…I frequently get the same. If they ever go on for a half hour, I'll reach for a couple colchicine but that happens only rarely…maybe once or twice a year.
cjeezy said:
I have however eaten a very large seafood dinner and washed it down with beer while walking miles and miles and did not feel anything the following morning (maybe I got lucky). In fact I tested my UA levels that same evening a few times and the odd thing was they ranged from 4.3- 4.7 so I still don't understand this entire gout thing.
I don't think anybody understands the entire gout thing.
I'm getting a bit closer with the allopurinol thing.
I've said before that logically, if you are on allopurinol, then purine intake should not matter because the enzyme (xanthine oxidase – XO) that is required to turn purines into uric acid is restricted by allopurinol. Of course, things are never that simple, and there might be something about purine intake that prompts more XO to be produced.
There seems very little research on the effects of diet when on allopurinol, but I've just tried again, and come up with a couple of interesting quotes:
“allopurinol intake seems to be effective in controlling the rapid increase in plasma uric acid caused by ingestion of alcoholic beverages”
“With respect to uric acid lowering effects, these results are in accordance with findings in patients overproducing uric acid endogenously and suggest that the uric acid lowering effect of allopurinol is enhanced with increasing concentrations of purine bases”
Both of these are surrounded by almost incomprehensible jargon, which I'm still trying to decipher,
They seem to support the view, which I have heard from other allopurinol takers, that on allopurinol, you can eat and drink whatever you like.
zip2play said:
Post edited 7:41 pm – December 3, 2009 by zip2play
I recognize what you mean when you say foot twinges that last seconds or minutes…I frequently get the same. If they ever go on for a half hour, I'll reach for a couple colchicine but that happens only rarely…maybe once or twice a year.
On a good note, you may be able to wait longer than that half hour. Every now and then I'll get one that lasts about a day, but it goes away too without Colchicine. Weird. I'm trying to think on the positive side of hopefully my early AP intervention at the ripe age of 31 will be more effective than if I waited years and years! Although it's still a bit scary knowing I could be on this drug for 40-50+ yrs lol.
cjeezy said:
I'm trying to think on the positive side of hopefully my early AP intervention at the ripe age of 31 will be more effective than if I waited years and years! Although it's still a bit scary knowing I could be on this drug for 40-50+ yrs lol.
You mean that there is no new therapy for Gouties next 40-50 yrs..That is really scary
Up until last year it had been nearly a half century since the LAST development (allopurinol.) It was 58 years since probenecid was approved. So every half century or so is the best we can do.
Think of gout sufferers born in Medieval time who had to wait a millennium until the first drug.
You know I always appreciate everyones insite here! Here's where my main confusion comes from and maybe one of you can help me understand this better. We all know twinges/attacks come when either new crystals are forming or old crystals are dissolving. It “appears” in Zips case, when he gets the occassional twinges from beer (or whatever) it is most likely due to new crystals attempting to form. Now in my case, since I have not dissolved nearly enough urate (like Zip for example) most of my pains are from crystals dissolving. Heres where my confusion comes into play. I have gotten the occassional twinges after drinking larger quanities of beer on a couple ocassions (no acute attacks luckily), however my levels were always below 6 during these times. So were these twinges from new crystals forming or old dissolving or is it more complicated and I'm totally off base lol.
I actually visited my doctor today. This one seems to know the Gout very well and actually insists that SUA should be below 5 most of the time and lower the better though occasional near 6 should not matter.
I discussed with him on twinges.
He said that most people get confused on twinges with the stress factor. For example, he said if you feel occasional burn in feet while you are wearing a shoe or walking, it is mostly due to stress on the foot. However, if you feel it when you are resting, sleeping, getup in morning etc. it is more like a real twinge.
After you think you know about Gout, we find there is so much more to know.
I guess it is like a maze – more you get inside it, more you get lost
zip2play said:
Up until last year it had been nearly a half century since the LAST development (allopurinol.) It was 58 years since probenecid was approved. So every half century or so is the best we can do.
Think of gout sufferers born in Medieval time who had to wait a millennium until the first drug.
I guess all of them turned into vampires, seeking to take revenge of their Gout sufferings. They somehow sucked our blood and passed on their Gout virus inside us Gouties. Their souls are liberated while ours are in a mess
Utubelite said:
I actually visited my doctor today. This one seems to know the Gout very well and actually insists that SUA should be below 5 most of the time and lower the better though occasional near 6 should not matter.
I discussed with him on twinges.
He said that most people get confused on twinges with the stress factor. For example, he said if you feel occasional burn in feet while you are wearing a shoe or walking, it is mostly due to stress on the foot. However, if you feel it when you are resting, sleeping, getup in morning etc. it is more like a real twinge.
After you think you know about Gout, we find there is so much more to know.
I guess it is like a maze – more you get inside it, more you get lost
Ask your Md when was his last gout attact. Remember doctors always say this will sting a bit as the stick a 4″ needle into your joints.LOL If you have gout you no what the twinges are.
I am sure my doctor did not have it recently otherwise he would have been on this forum…unless he is hidden somewhere here
Thank goodness everyone is discussing twinges instead of roaring with pain.
Reminds me of when I used to fix computers. If it didn't work, the fix was usually pretty easy to find. An intermittent computer twinge is like a gouty one – could be almost anything. And at the moment, I'm far more bothered by computer twinges than gouty ones
And an ACUTE ATTACK OF FRANK GOUT is akin to the blue screen of death that lasts over a week on the computer.
Or else knocking one's monitor off the desk.(When I mention I felt a twinge it is ALWAYS foot pain on arising from sleep. Day in and day out sore feet from being on them for a long walk in new shoes or 45 minutes on the elliptical <always barefoot> or pain from kicking my scale across the room with bare feet I ignore.
I really think it is difficult to lay down new urate when you are up and around, maybe too much blood and lymph flow? It is a sinister disease that attacks during the night when we lie motionless in the dark. Yep, a vampire's visit is a good analogy…or worse, a bedbug's.)
I guess for me the question is, how can I have twinges in the morning after a high purine meal or drinks when UA is below 6? Can high purine intake cause flare ups even if your below 6…or is this all in my head and its not possible lol
cjeezy said:
I guess for me the question is, how can I have twinges in the morning after a high purine meal or drinks when UA is below 6? Can high purine intake cause flare ups even if your below 6…or is this all in my head and its not possible lol
Perhaps there is a fleeting time, a half hour, 3 hours, a half day, some time after a high purine meal where the serum uric acid soars above 10 or 15 mg./dL. Perhaps one COULD catch this burst if one were diligenltly monitoring SUA eve half hour after a purine meal…an expensive proposition.
For example, a serving of sweetbreads, the worst offender admittedly, provides the amount of purines that the resulting uric acid would take 2 DAYS to clear the body! A meal of calves liver is nearly as bad. Thus there has to some point where all those purines in a couple hours after digestion would result in an IMMENSE flood of blood urate. Let's do the numbers on a gram of purine. Assume conversion on a gram to gram basis…this is close to exact becasue the entire xanthine family including uric acid differs in only a couple atoms from one another, the purine base is a constant.
So a gram, (1000 mg.) of xanthine dispersed into the blood is 1000 mg. into 50 dL of blood (the average human.) If digested and converted instantaneously the burst of uiric acid could be as much as an increase of 20 mg./dL in SUA…horrific.
So, given a need for 2 days to dispel this dose off urate and a digestive process measured in a few hours to a half day there MUST be a huge burp-up in SUA. Add to this the fact that the body is already at close to the balance point between input and excretion before the dietary insult and it is easy to imagine the effect being triggered by far less than the fabled sweetbread meal.
So, I guess I am saying that a person with USUAL SUA readings <6.0 may show MUCH higher fleeting bursts. It seems quite logical to me that this should be so.
Wow an increase of 20! Your rationale makes sense though. I've only tested at most 3-4X after a meal so logically there could be small windows of high levels that were missed.
cjeezy said:
Wow an increase of 20! Your rationale makes sense though. I've only tested at most 3-4X after a meal so logically there could be small windows of high levels that were missed.
Are these windows of high levels important? I guess what I am asking is – after every meal with high purine food, the SUA levels would go up shortly, probably much beyond 6. Could this cause urate buildup ad trigger gout?
Probably, one should not sleep for few hours after such high intake of purines so that the vampire bite while we are asleep does not find high enough uric acid and cold body to covnert them into urate crystals, hence triggering gout.
Probably, one should not sleep for few hours after such high intake of purines.
That sounds like a logical corollary to me.
GoutPal said:
Thank goodness everyone is discussing twinges instead of roaring with pain.
Reminds me of when I used to fix computers. If it didn’t work, the fix was usually pretty easy to find. An intermittent computer twinge is like a gouty one ? could be almost anything. And at the moment, I’m far more bothered by computer twinges than gouty ones
Hi everyone,
Sorry not been in much, I have been sorting Windows 7 & internet problems for nearly a month! a new clean install fixed it…. too bad we can’t all do a “clean install” when it comes to gout!:lol:Well, it is about one year ago today the “vampire” struck me in the right foot,(I was sure it was an insect bite, then) but had I known then what I know now, thanks to this site.. I would not have waited two days before heading to the hospital & ending up staying there for 5 or six days on IV to control the pain in the right leg.
But now I seem to only get the occasional twinge & swelling of the right foot.(usually). I do try to keep my feet elevated when sleeping, which is not always easy.
But I have to say, I took my self off all the pills, a little over a month ago & seem to be OK with a few daily doses of B.B.B. & for the most part avoiding Chicken, which seems to be the worse of any of the foods I eat, & causes twinges & larger swelling of the foot. Most days my feet seem fairly normal. Although as I write this I feel throbbing in the right foot… oh dear!
Come this Christmas, a number of us “Expats” are getting together for a full turkey dinner, so perhaps come the 26th I may regret having participated, but last Christmas was just laying down & doing very little as the pain was so intense when standing!… so I am going to take my chances & go for it!:eek:
I have not been to get any testing done either, I suppose I should that, just to see where things are…. perhaps tomorrow, tomorrow!:wink:
Jim,
I hope you will enjoy your sumptous turkey dinner this X'mas. Perhaps, this could be a good opportunity for you to test the efficacy/effectiveness of BBB – do not do anything if you feel any twinges, wait for the pain to set in before you take your big gulps of BBB. Observe how it works on the pain and inflammation and let us have the feedback
. I did this myself and was absolutely amazed with the experience and outcome.
Merry Christmas and a gout free Happy New Year.
Metamorph,
I was hoping you might know the answer to the ginger question, the stuff that grows here in the tropics, that grows about 6 feet high. There is tons of it growing around the property I have.
I’ll experiment with some on the next batch, I can’t see it would harm or even taste that bad.The other thing I been drinking lately is Cinnamon juice, I just put a few sticks about 1″ long in a glass of hot water & let it sit, then drink it & reuse the sticks until they get too weak…
I saw some mention of Cinnamon on this site somewhere. The reason for taking it is more for Cholesterol lowering… I don’t think it has any effect on the foot swelling…?
I know when I do my “Indian food Fix” of Chicken Vindaloo or what ever… Which is not as often as I would like, because I know that the next day the twinges & swelling will come for sure… 😥
Although, now I have this BBB making down pat, without boiling it dry! (brought a timer!) I can usually get most of the swelling & twinges down in about 20 minutes to half an hour.:smile:
So, we’ll see after the Turkey feast next week!:wink:
Jim,
You are lucky to have tons of ginger growing around your property, you can start a business selling them to the local people/restaurants.
In this part of the world (SEA), ginger is widely used for a wide range of gourmet dishes, Thai food is a good example – spicy and with lots of ginger added. Ginger goes very well with black bean soup and of course with many other ingredient added – as a tonic. Some people simply boil black beans with ginger, then add brown sugar to make nice drink to warm up their bodies and get rid of “wind” in their system.
I think the only difference between the ginger in the tropics and that of the other parts of the world is the “price”. In Australia I had to pay a few dollars for a piece of ginger when I paid less than a dollar back home in SEA.
This gout humor topic is now closed.
It covers several variations on a theme, including:
- gout humor
- gout jokes
- gout holidays
The trouble is: it isn’t very funny, and the “joke” was immediately followed by serious stuff. C’mon guys! Where’s the funny?
I will move the relevant parts of the discussion to a new common questions section, as time allows. In the meantime, you can easily search for current discussions, or start a new discussion.
You can find the search box at the top of every page, or at the foot of the right-hand sidebar. Even easier, please use the gout search page.
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