What Is Gout?
Written by Bart Icles   
Sunday, 30 August 2009 08:31
You would sometimes hear adults complaining that they are experiencing excruciating pain in their joints, tendons, and the tissues surrounding them. Chances are, if they are experiencing this symptom, they have gout. It is one among the different types of arthritis that exists, and as with the other types of arthritis, the pain level that can most often be recurring is just about the same and can be, at times, debilitating.
by BartIcles


You would sometimes hear adults complaining that they are experiencing excruciating pain in their joints, tendons, and the tissues surrounding them. Chances are, if they are experiencing this symptom, they have gout. It is one among the different types of arthritis that exists, and as with the other types of arthritis, the pain level that can most often be recurring is just about the same and can be, at times, debilitating.

To be able to classify gout from other types of arthritis, it is a disease that is characterized by elevated levels of uric acid in the bloodstream. Elevated levels of uric acid, also known as MSU or monosodium urate, would cause them to crystallize and be deposited into the joints, tendons, and the tissues surrounding them, causing painful attacks that are recurring and, at times, can become so excruciatingly painful to the point of manifesting debilitation to those afflicted by it. The deposit of crystallized monosodium urate is referred to as tophus.

Historically, gout or gouty arthritis is known as the "Disease of Kings" or "Rich Man's Disease" because only royalty and people from the high echelons of society are the ones afflicted with it. The first incidence of gout was documented by around 2600 B.C. when the Egyptians noted the swelling of the big toe. It was not known as gout then, though. The condition started being known as "gout" when Randolphus of Bocking coined it initially at around 1200 A.D, which he derived from the word "gutta," a Latin word meaning "a drop of liquid." It was the Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek who first described the microscopic appearance of uric acid crystals in 1679, and in 1848, Alfred Baring Garrod, an English physician, was the one who realized that elevated levels of uric acid in the bloodstream is the cause of gout.

Moving forward to more recent studies, according to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the US government headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia in a study they did within 2003-2005, "an estimated 46 million adults in the United States reported being told by the doctor that they have some form of arthritis, rheumatoid, gout, lupus, or fibromyalgia.

Statistically, approximately 75 percent of gout attacks occur in the big toe. The remaining 25 percent may occur in the ankle, instep, knee, wrist, heel, fingers, elbow, or spine. High uric acid levels in the body are usually caused by the ingestion of foods high in purine, like seafoods, red meat, alcoholic beverages, organ meat like liver and kidneys, sardines, meat extracts, spinach, asparagus, spinach, cauliflower, and anchovies to name a few. A balanced diet for people who have gout, according to the American Medical Association, would be a combination of foods low in protein, high in complex carbohydrates, and low in fat.

About the Author:

Many gout home remedies emphasize the importance of changing one's lifestyle. Home remedies for gout, like anything else, only works if you stick to it.