Gout Is Personal!

[Keith Taylor]

I’m prompted by a recent discussion that has touched on alcohol, allopurinol, colchicine, and target uric acid levels.

In common with many forum threads, we covered a lot of issues, and some of those have links with other threads. This is exactly how forums work. Your profile helps to tie threads together, but it can soon become difficult to keep track, especially for prolific posters.

Now, I happen to believe that writing about your gout is a great way to understand and control it. Well, it works for me. I want to encourage daily, or at least weekly posting. Yet, it’s easy to get lost.

The Please Help My Gout forum is great for answering simple gout questions that have a limited range of answers. But, when interlinked issues, and important yet unknown factors creep in, it becomes very difficult to avoid getting lost.

In my new gout forum, I will provide a personal forum where any GoutPal member can raise topics about their key concerns. It doesn’t stop you from joining in with other gout sufferers, but it does help resolve important questions. I’ve realized that there is no need to wait until I move the forum. I can do it now.

When I encounter threads that I think might benefit from a personal mini-project, I’ll point them here.

If you are confused about multiple aspects of gout, and need to draw different questions, experiences, and opinions together, this could be for you. Just start by listing those concerns, and what you want to achieve. I’ll then start a guided discussion in your own forum area, or ask for more information.

Over to you.

[Paul]

Hi Keith,
Most important to me:-
Allopurinol usage and levels
Uric acid levels, what to aim for?
Diet, what to eat/avoid?
Alcohol, good bad or OK when controlled?
Time scales? How long treatment should take?

Cheers, Paul.

[Keith Taylor]

Thanks for responding Paul.

Because gout is personal, I’m very interested in what you want to achieve. It sounds obvious, but everyone really does have a different view. Some want immediate pain to go. Some want gout to never return. Some (like me) just want to understand more. This is important, because if we start a plan, we need to know if it’s working or not. So…

Allopurinol – Why do you take it? What do you hope it will do for you? I’m going to link this with uric acid levels because they are related to each other. We could start a project called something like “Paul’s plan for uric acid levels with allopurinol.” This would involve us agreeing some immediate and long-term targets, then reviewing them at least once a month. I’ll start this as soon as you tell me to. Please just let me know:
1. What do you hope to achieve by taking allopurinol that you wouldn’t get if you didn’t take it?
2. Can you think of a better title than the one I suggested?

Diet – what does it mean to you? I’m going to include alcohol in this, as it’s part of diet. They say we are what we eat, so this is very personal. So, what do you want from your diet? People often say, just tell me what I can and can’t eat, but gout is not that simple. However, if you want to make it simple, I could just give you a set of eating plans that would not make your gout worse. I hope you can understand that isn’t what I’m really here to do, but I don’t mind doing it. Another way is for you to tell me exactly what you eat and drink, then I’ll analyse it and make suggestions on how you can make it better. That’s a much better option for me, especially if you tell me about things that you wanted to eat, but you avoided them because you thought they might make gout worse. Finally, we could just do one or more projects on specific aspects of food and gout, such as “How alcohol affects Paul’s Gout.” As you can see, there are lots of ways to approach this, so I’m going to need more input from you before I can start a project. Do you want a simple “tell me what to eat” plan, or a more involved “help me understand” project?

Treatment Time-scales
I think this falls in with the allopurinol and uric acid topic. If you’re thinking of something different, please let me know.

[GoutPal HelpDesk]

This discussion about personal gout guides has moved to the new gout forum.

Are you are interested in better personal guides based on professional gout management principles?

Please share your thoughts at Improving Gout Management Principles for Gout Sufferers.

If you have any other questions about gout, please ask in the new gout forum.

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