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I cannot find the answer to this question I have been searching for after realising there is a relationship between high uric acid levels and heart disease. How likely is it that heart failure could be causing elevated blood uric acid and therefore gout? Or is it that the high uric acid levels are causing the heart failure due to the auto immune response?
I wrote a little about gout & heart disease last year.
Many researchers have reported links between high uric acid and heart disease, but nobody, as far as I am aware, knows what the link is.
The best source I know for keeping an eye on the latest gout research is Pubmed.
It makes sense to have your heart checked if you have gout.
(I have registered since this request.) After realising the symptoms of the main shoulder pain were exactly described for Calcific Tendonitis, I thought my problem maybe Pseudo-Gout and not Rheumatoid Arthritis which my Rheumatogist had diagnosed. Associating the main flare-ups in my shoulder with summer, I also realised that this maybe due to magnesium deficiency through loss of salts, so tried a magnesium suppliment. Within six days, without taking my prescribed medication, my so called rheumatoid arthritis cleared up. Working through this properly, I have given myself a diet to increase my body water and electrolytes so as not to increase sodium intake out of proportion. (Porridge, Magnesium Citrate, Bananas for Pottasium and plenty of water to allow my body to regulate itself with the essential Magnesium.) All pain in my wrists, hips and shoulder has gone, and now that I have introduced milk and other dairy products back into my diet, I can do 20 press-ups and windmill both arms without pain. (Wouldn't have tried that in the past two years.) It occurs to me that if I had not realised this, I may have accepted my diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis and taken the medication for pain relief without addressing the magnesium deficiency. As magnesium plays a crucial role in so many body mechanisms including heart beat regulation, kidney functions and food storage in the liver, I would stongly suggest that this may well be the real cause of the heart disease. My experience begs the question as to why do doctors not test for electolyte imbalance as a matter of routine for any complaint? Reading up on the magnesium deficiency shows this to be a far more important subject requiring government guidelines than the potentially bad advice of low salt diets. Low salt diets may be good advice for people known to be suffering from heart disease, but is probably the cause of heart disease in people like me.
It's great news that the pain is subsiding.
However I'm still confused about your diagnosis. Did your rheumatologist never suggest arthrocentesis (aka aspiration) to examine fluid from your affected joint(s)?
As far as I know, this is the only sure way to correctly identify joint disease, as symptoms are common between many diseases. Also, it is possible to suffer from more than one joint disease at the same time.
I've always thought that arthrocentesis was a fairly standard procedure amongst rheumatologists. Now, it seems that diagnosis amounts to almost guessing the disease, and hoping that the treatment will confirm the diagnosis.
Anyway, thank you for your interesting insight into magnesium deficiency. I'm struggling to understand exactly how this affects calcium in the body, so I'm researching the Food Standards Agency's Review of Magnesium, which seems to be a thorough investigation of magnesium, unless anyone knows of a better source.
I think the evidence is growing that high uric acid is damaging to the linings of blood vessels…this doesn't surprise me becasuse I have coronary artery disease. I'm sure the uric acid is causative rather than the other way round. (As far as heart failure goes, of course diminished coronary artery flow is ultimately its primary cause.)
I have a pet theory that is not getting any play in the literature anymore that uric acid plays a LARGE roll in all the arthritic diseases. Thus it does not surprise me that gouty people have, in addition to the increased risk of heart disease, bad backs, ruined knees, wonky shoulder rotator cuffs…I have all three.
After all, any inflamed or injured joint become acidic and therefore may be the concentration point for uric acid. Just because it is in subclinical amounts that are difficult to aspirate does not deny its presence.
A prominent rheumatologist of several decades ago treated ALL his bad back patients with INJECTIONS of colchicine and claimed remarkable results. His claim was that almost all the pain of a bad back, whatever its cause, was from uric acid.
I take Magnesium oxide every day providing 250 mg. of Mg++, I;ve recently added, in order to alkalinize my urine (and system) another ounce of magneesium citrate (liquid) that provides .1.7 grams of mg. citrate or about 255 mg. more of magnesium. It seems ann easy thing to try so I hope for some of the same relief Martin got. I've got nothing to lose.
Yep, my shoulder crucifies me, my knees are breaking down, and I have been on diuretics for centuries…god knows what a mess my electrolytes might be.
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