Truth Of Uric Acid & Gout Revealed

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Gout is Becoming a Pandemic Disease!

Gout is becoming like a pandemic disease! Despite the fact that it is not contagious, but it has shown signs and patterns of a pandemic disease. It is affect more and more adult males at a very fast pace and the affected age group is getting younger and younger.

If I would to say gout is a pandemic disease, then what is the transferring agent that spreads this malicious illness globally, especially in the developed countries? Is it a virus, bacteria, or fungus? No! The name of the agent is... Lifestyle!

Gout can be considered as a social disease, a disease where shows an analogical and significant correlation between lifestyle habits, especially diet and social development. Take a trip some not so developed countries where for the people living there, the luxury of having yummy meaty food can only happens in their dreams.

If you ask among the adult males above the age of 30, how many of them or their friends and relatives are suffering from gout. You might get blank stares with puzzles wondering what you are talking about. Gout can be very rare in places like, so rate that most of the local citizens hardly heard of throughout their lives!

As stated by Dr. Gillian McKeith in her popular book, you are what you eat! Gout is a result of what you put into your mouth. Gout is a benchmark of how much meat and alcohol you have consumed through out your life.

There are many different theories on how gout comes about. Some say it is because of the lack of certain enzyme in to body that can help to get rid of the excessive uric acids. Some say it is because of the weaken kidneys that failed to excrete the uric acid through urine properly. Some even say it is because of family genetic inheritance.

What ever the reason it may be, one thing for sure is that gout is proven to be a disease of a 'rich' lifestyle. As more and more people having good life as a result of rapid economy development, more and more people will join the rank of gout army.

Gout might not be a deadly disease but the impacts it can bring to you and your family immeasurable. Not only it brings the unbearable torturing pain, it brings along emotional stress that can spread to everyone else in the family.

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Why Gout Does Not Happen to Most Other Mammals?

Whenever it comes to discussing about gout related issues, one primary topic is, "What causes gout?" Then people will start pointing fingers at the over consumption of high purine foods such as organs meat, sardine, anchovies, mushrooms and the list goes on.

Purine is a natural organic compound exists in all living things. The amount of naturally occurring purines on earth is enormous. Out of four bases found in DNA: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine two of them (adenine and guanine) are forms of purine. Other popular forms of purine are caffeine found in coffee and theobromine (the compound that gives chocolate its bitter taste).

Every day there are millions of body cells die, and this will result in huge amount of DNA being broken down to release those DNA bases. Guanine will go through a process called deamination which break down guanine to xanthine by an enzyme called guanase, then another enzyme, xanthine oxidase will then oxidize xanthine to uric acid.

Uric acid is the final end products of purine degradation in humans and higher apes, but the degradation process goes one step further in most other mammals. There is another enzyme called uricase which further transforms uric acid to allantoin. Does that name sound familiar to you? Allantoin is a popular ingredient found in a wide range of beauty products! Take a look at the ingredients list of some of the facial creams.

Scientists believe that uricase did exist in our ancient ancestors, but somehow along the process of evolution, human lost the ability to produce uricase in the body due to some sort of enzymatic defects. This could be what the factor to that is responsible for all types of gout, primary as well as secondary.

Since purine or uric acid does not occur in excessive amount inside most mammal body, why we, human get a huge surge of uric acid in our blood after consuming the meat from these animals, especially their organs? Why for some gout patients, consumption of just small piece of these meats will suffer the gout attack within hours?

Two major animal organs that contain high concentration of purine are the liver and kidney. This is because that is where the purine degradation process takes place. Huge amount of purines will be carried by the blood to these sites to be broken down to uric acid and then allantoin which will eventually get out from its body through the urine of feces.

Hemen Ee has helped hundreds of gout patients getting rid of their gout pains by neutralizing those excessive uric acids using the latest ionizing technology. Interested to discover the truth of conventional gout remedies? Visithttp://www.sayonaragout.net today to get a copy of FREE Report.

How Can You Treat Gout at Home Before Visiting a Doctor?

Gout is a sudden attack that hits you anytime without any early warning signs. Usually it strikes when you sleeping soundly in the middle of a cold peaceful night. Out of nowhere you feel a sudden pain in your big toe, ankle or knee as if someone hit it with a big hammer.

In some cases, the condition is so severe that the victim cannot even walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water and take some aspirin. Aspirin might help to relieve the headache that you are having as a result of not enough sleep or worry over the swollen joint, but aspirin has no effect on getting rid of the burning pain at the affected joints.

Then you might think of using some ice bag or soak the whole foot in the a bucket of icy cold water hoping that will somehow numb away the intense pain. It works! But after thirty minutes or so when the freezing effect is gone, your nerves are back to action sending all those pain signals to your brain, again.

The same temporary effect applies to warm water soaking too. When soak your painful feet inside the slightly below boiling temperature of hot water, you will feel a sudden soothing sensation that makes you temporarily forget about the pain you had before. When the temperature drops, the pain signals will soon override the comforting signals produced by the warm water. As mention in my previous article, it is better to use warm water instead of cold water if you do not want the gout condition to become worse in the future.

If you are far away from the nearest hospital, maybe you are on a vacation or what. You can try the baking soda treatment to temporarily lower down the uric acid that causes the gout attack. You must also drink plenty of water to help flush away those excessive uric acids.

Take one tea spoon full of baking soda (or chemically known as sodium bicarbonate) and mix it with a glass of water and drink it all with an empty stomach. After 30 minutes or so, take another glass of baking soda water to further boost the neutralization of uric acid.

DO NOT consume more than 4 tea spoons of baking soda in a day! If you have some other health complications such as hypertension or on certain course of medication, baking soda is not for you. Remember, this is just a temporary remedy and you must seek proper medication as soon as possible.

Your Highness! Congratulations For Getting the Disease of Kings - Gout!

Throughout history, gout has been associated with rich foods and excessive alcohol consumption, a lifestyle that could only be afforded by the wealthy class of the society. In the olden days, the kings and their loyal families were the only group of people who had the luxury to enjoy all the meaty food and drown themselves in the sea of alcohol.

They shown signs of gout attack at very young age and it became acute and chronic at the later part of their life which also resulted in other health complications such as heart disease and kidney failure. This is why some of them died at relatively young ages. This is why gout was popularly known as 'The Disease of Kings' or 'Rich Man's Disease'.

Wondering who were the rich and famous in our history books that suffered from gout? Just to name a few prominent figures here, among the famous gout patient are Alexander the Great, Charlemagne or Charles the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Voltaire, Sir Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If people were more openly discuss about their health problem, more cases will be recorded and you will be surprised by the thousands of names that were listed.

King Henry VIII, who lived from 1491 to 1547, was a famous victim of gout. It is well known that in his later life, he was abhorrently overweight and suffered from gout and possibly syphilis. However, he had been a very active man in his younger days. It was an accident in 1536 that made him suffered a thigh wound which prevented him from any exercise or physical activities.

Now look back at our modern lifestyle, can you the number of King Henry VIII among us? It is as if everybody is living the king's life. Nice food is abundant and is very much affordable compared to the last few centuries.

It does not take a wounded thigh to cripple us or stop us from some healthy exercise. Cinema-like LCD TV, Computer games, Play Station are just portion of things that stops us from being physically active.

Continuous consumption of highly acidic food and lack of exercise (which promote blood circulation and detoxification) will result in excessive accumulation of uric acids which will crystallize in the joints and trigger gout attack. It is totally up to you to decide to be a healthy king or gouty king.

What Food is OK to Eat For a Person Who Has Gout?

Gout is a direct result of your diet habit over the years. The more serious your gout condition is the more items you will need to strike off from your list of favorite food. You will be shocked when you see the list of food you cannot eat, which is almost 90 percent of your favorite. Instead of telling you a long list of food you can eat, it is more practical to explain to you what food you should avoid.

When you consume too much food which has high purine content such as organ meats, sardines, anchovies, mutton, and the list goes on... Most of them are high protein food from animal sources, but even some non-meat food which are high in purine too, common one that is often heard of associate with gout attack are some mushrooms, peas, beans and cauliflower.

Purines are natural substances found in all cells because it is the vital part of DNA structure. Millions of cells die within our body in a day. As cells are broken down through various bio-chemical mechanisms, significant amount of purine will be released and these free floating purines will be further broken down to uric acid which will eventually excreted out from the body through urine.

You are adding extra burden to your body if you continuously eat in more purines. Your liver and kidneys will have to work extra hard to get rid of those excessive uric acids and it will reach a point when it can take it no more and this is when those uric acids seep into your joint and crystallize to urate crystals that trigger your gout attack.

If you want to reverse the process, not only you have to minimize or cut off (the hardest thing to do) your high purine diet, you must also eat more food which is classified as alkaline food to help detoxify or neutralize those excessive acids that accumulated in your body over the years.

This change of diet is not like the slimming program that last only for a few weeks or months. In order to get rid of or cure your gout, you must gradually shift your eating habit from carnivorous towards the herbivore side and keep it so for as long as you can. It is like paying back the 'debt' over the years. Well, it is okay to be omnivore sometimes. After all, food is part of joy in life. Just like many aspects of life, do not over-indulge.

Which Over the Counter Drug is Good For Gout?

Depending on your current condition, there are different types of common OTC gout medicines that can help to reduce the swelling or pain caused by the attack. You must bear in mind that it is always better to obtain professional medical advice from your doctor before taking any of the following drugs.

Colchicine is a natural extract from plants of the genus Colchicum. It has been used as a treatment for gout pain for centuries. It works by affecting the way your body responds to urate crystals and decreases inflammation and pain.

One shall not assume Colchicine as a cure for gout, it does not prevent the disease from progressing and Colchicine should never be used as a pain relief medication for other conditions. If you have other diseases that require daily medications, consult your doctor before taking Colchicine.

If the uric acid level of your blood is constantly above the normal range, then you will need to take allopurinol to suppress or lower down the uric acid level in your body. Allopurinol is taken on normal day when you are not suffering from gout attack, you cannot take it when your gouty joints are suffering the painful inflammation.

Allopurinol reduces the production of uric acid by inhibiting xanthine oxidase, an enzyme than catalyzes the conversion of purine to uric acid. You must drink at least 2 liters of water per day to help flush those uric acids out from body.

If your gout condition becomes serious or chronic, then you might need to take NSAID, Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Ibuprofen is one of the common NSAIDs prescribed for gout patients. Ibuprofen is used to reduce the fever and pain or inflammation caused by the gout attack.

You must follow the prescribed dosage of ibuprofen because an overdose can cause gastrointestinal damage. Minimum amount of ibuprofen is enough to relieve your pain. Long term consumption of NSAIDs can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

If all of the above mentioned drugs fail, then you will have to depend on steroidal drugs such cortisone to get rid of the pain. But steroids will only do more harms than good. That is the last resort that you should try your best to avoid. It is hard to avoid it when you needed it so much because the pain is so intense. What you should avoid is letting the condition to develop until this irreversible stage.

Heemen Ee has helped hundreds of gout patients getting rid of their gout pains by neutralizing those excessive uric acids using the latest ionizing technology. Interested to discover the truth of conventional gout remedies? Visithttp://www.sayonaragout.net today to get a copy of FREE Report.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Difference Between Gout and Pseudogout

Pseudogout is a not so well known disease which shows the similar symptoms or effects as gout. Just like gout, it is also a form of arthritis that attacks suddenly and gives a painful swelling inflammation in one or more of your joints.

Gout is the result of too much urid acid in the body that causes crystallization that forms a type of fine crystals which is scientifically known as monosodium urate. On the other hand pseudogout is caused by the deposition of calcium pyrophosphate crystals in the synovial fluid of joints. Pseudogout is often referred to as Calcium Pyprophosphate Deposition Disease, CPPD.

Thus, what differentiates between gout and CPPD is the type of crystal deposits. Since number of gout cases is many times greater than the cases of CPPD which makes gout a more popular and this is why CPPD is known as pseudogout which literally means "false gout".

Pseudogout usually occurs in individuals of age 50 and above. One interesting fact is, pseudogout tend to attack women more frequently while in the case of gout, it is men that dominate more 90 percent of the cases.

Reports show that pseudogout can occasionally coexist with gout. This means that both of those types of crystal can be found in the same joint fluid at times. Researchers have also noted that the cartilage is more calcified when both forms of deposits is found in a particular joint.

While gout can be diagnosed by observing the symptoms of the affected joints and confirmed with the uric acid level in the blood test report (although there some cases where gout attacks people with healthy uric acid level).

Since there is not direct correlation between pseudogout with any of the elements in the blood test, the most accurate water to diagnose whether a patient is having CPPD is through X-ray. This is because pseudogout is a type of calcifications known as chondocalcinosis and calcium compound deposit is visible on the X-ray films.

Another way to differentiate gout from pseudogout in the lab is through examination of the synovial fluid from the joint. Under a special powerful microscope called polarizing microscope, the calcium pyrophosphate crystals can be identified because both types of crystals have very different chemical structure.

Treatments for pseudogout are same as the treatments for gout. This is because both cases have the same immune reactions that cause inflammation and pain regardless of what type of crystal that triggers it. Thus, colchicines and NSAIDs (ibuprofen) are applicable to pseudogout patients. The only exception is allopurinol which controls the uric acid level in the blood, it will be useless in the case of CPPD.