Sometimes a bb gun works, sometimes not.
BB guns will chase squirrels out of your yard, but don’t try it on abear.
Let’s talk about a minimalistic approach to gout for just a fewmoments. If your gout can be described as a sore toe once or twicea year, then lifestyle and dietary changes may do the trick foryou. My father only got gout after holiday binging on rich foodsand alcohol, and then he got it only in his big toe. SOMETIMES hewould take colchicine for it, but most of the time he just “rode itout” with lots of fresh water and no red meat for a few days. Hedid this his whole adult life. He is now 84 years old, and NEVERgets gout anymore (due primarily as I observe to the fact he is on arather restricted diet, can’t drink alcohol anymore, and lives astress-free life).
When I first started getting gout, I was able to stave off attacksthrough dietary and lifestyle modifications- BUT, in my case thegout was/ is highly progressive. In recent years, no matter WHAT Idid or did not drink or eat made no difference at all- the attackskept coming- monthly, weekly, daily until I hurt all the time anddeveloped knobby tophi all over the place. Who knows what kind ofpermanent damage gout has done to my joints over the past couplayears? I KNOW the damage it has done to my life. Going from beinga guy who could throw jumping spinning kicks over 7′ in the air allday long to a guy everybody now calls “gimp” is just one example.(I used to be a quite a dancer as well- now I am learning to justwalk again).
Anyway, my point is this- there ARE cases of gout that can betreated with changes in diet and lifestyle, BUT don’t be stubbornabout seeking aggressive medical treatment if the gout becomeschronic. If avoiding “triggers” and drinking lots of water does notprevent your attacks then seek treatment immediately and stay withit because every day with gout hurts your body irreparably.Unfortunately, we have only one true proven preventative treatmentfor gout right now and that is allopurinol. (Remember- NSAIDS,steroids, narcotics all only MASK pain and inflammation- they donothing to treat the underlying illness)
Sabina Shamel on July 19th, 2007
There is a way that some of us who have gout can move on in lifewithout riding the A-train and, in my haste to reply, I did omit theoption, but it is not an option involving fancy herbs and specialconcotions from ancient Chinese medicine. It does, however, involvean ancient Chinese diet which has also been popular in Japan, Vietnamand all over most of Asia, which is that they live primarily on rice.They also don’t have enough to eat, on average, each and every day oftheir lives and, among the Asian population that lives this way,there is indeed, a relatively low incidence of gout.
It is a fact that Gout is associated with people who eat to excessand who eat an excess of the wrong kinds of foods.
The remedy for many of us, can be, just as described, a minimilistapproach to eating and all you have to do is get yourself relativelybone skinny and keep your self virtually starved for protein.
I’ll be specific with an animal I try to manage and I believe that itis this inability that I have to manage my captive animal, that leadseach of us to try to reform our way of life and stay away fromallopurinol.
The animal under my control is 5′10″ tall and when it graduated fromhigh school it weighed 169 pounds. It’s waist was slightly over 29inches and I remember purchasing 30/30 pants for it. When my animalwas first struck down with real, rip-roaring Gout, it weighed in at179 and its waist size had grown to 34-36 depending on the season,overall stress level and time schedule from work.
Now, perhaps one could argue that I should have kept my animal at, orbelow, the 169 of the high school days but time and life move on andin the environment my animal lived, that was just not practical.There was a period when my animal was into distance rinning and itwas training for a half marathon and during that time, about a twoyear stretch of 5-8 miles of running, 5 days a week, it got down to165 and was able to comfortably wear the 30/30’s from high school.
Keep in mind, however, that keeping your animal’s weight down thatfar by using that much exercize will not help your gout. The fact isthat during that time my animal ate anything it waznted and in factate more than it eats now. It was butning off the calories but theuric acid load from those conditions is very high because muscletissue is being consumed at a much higher rate and food intake mustbe maintained at a high level to provide the energy for suchexertion.
Ok, so if you can maintain your animal at the bone skinny level anddo it without having to resort to excess levels of exercize, then youcan probably keep the Gout monster at bay. That is, some of us canget away with that. The problem is that with many of us who would tryto take that approach, it would not work. Unfortunately most of uswho have gout cannot keep it away, no matter how skinny we get.However, you can certainly try it because it is known to work in arelatively large number of cases. Before allopurinol it was the onlyway they had to keep the gout monster away and as you know thatmonster is pretty demanding.
The problem of reality in today’s world is that very few of us havethe discipline to keep our animals in a bone skinny state and on topof that keep the animal relatively starved for protien. Moreover, ifyou try to maintain your animal in those conditions you run a veryreal risk of killing your animal from a lack of this or that vitaminor mineral. It is extremely difficult to maintain your animalsoverall weight at 10% to 15% under weight and at the same time,maintain sufficient vitamin and mineral content in the diet.
One note here on such a state which I would loved to be at but do nothave the self discipline to do. If you manitain a mammal, be it rat,cat, dog, horse or human, in the state of roughly 10% under weightand also manage to supply an excess of all the nutritionalrequirements-something that literally requires a computer program tomaintain- that animal will live a much more healthy and much longerlife. The data on that are conclusive but in the human animal it isso damn hard to avoid that piece of pie, or the second helping or thesnack just before going to bed.
I think most of us are over weight and we feel guilty for havingallowed out animal to get that way and, somehow, we feel that weshould do better and that if the truth were really known, we would befound guilty of having abused our animal and the gout is somehow apunishment for not living and eating properly. Since we now have thegout thing, we will have the incentive to do better and lose theweight and then the Gour Monster won’t keep visiting us.
In my case the gout monster kept me from doing any real exercize andin the five years since I was first stricken with it, I allowed myanimal to balloon up to 220lbs and I bought my first pair of size 40waist pants.
That is terrible and I am terribly embaressed by it and have gone ona diet and an exercize routine to lose the weight. I am absolutelynot capable of doing losing the weight if I have to carry the GoutMnoster along with me every step of the way. I just cannot exercizewhen I am in constant pain and I am relatively unable to stop eatingwhen I sit around the house all day and feel sorry for myself becausemy damn foot hurts so much.
My reality is that I have been aboard the A train now for 6 monthsand I am finally Gout free and its now time to go back and reclaim mybody. It will never be what it once was but, some of it is stillthere. I want as much of it back as I can get. I’ll be happy if I canget back into my size 36 pants, I saved them by the way and I know Iwill live longer too, if I can do it.
So, I know in my heart that I cannot keep fit if I hurt all the timeand allopurinol allows me to live pain free. I can now eat regularfood just like everyone else.
However, I do take it as a blessing that may not last since I could,like other people, develop a sensitivity to allopurinol and I mayhave to go off it. So, in the interim, I plan to do some serious bodyreconstruction and for the near future, I will be in the exercize carof the A train for at least an hour every day.
Columbus Luthe on July 21st, 2007
WOW. Thank you so much for that. You have not only validated me, but inspired me. This has become less a website for the afflicted as much a website for the promotion of allopurinol, but the bottom line is RECLAIMING YOUR LIFE. It doesn’t matter what it takes, to get your life back is Golden.