Tag Archives: gout flare

Wipe Out Gout

Arthritis Foundation Launches Wipe Out Gout – Awareness Campaign

It may come as a surprise that gout is the most common cause of inflammatory arthritis among adults in the United States.1 It’s also very painful, but gout can be a management disease – meaning there are several things people with gout can do to reduce flares, or eliminate flares all together.
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Gout Patient Story

“Honey, I Have Gout”: A Spouse Reflects on Her Worries

At times, life can be difficult for those living with gout, but it can be just as hard on spouses. When you live in close quarters with a significant other, you undoubtedly feel the pain they deal with on a daily basis. Mira knows this firsthand.

Early on in their marriage, Mira’s husband returned from a business trip with a painful toe and they couldn’t figure out the cause. “For someone who was athletic and never had any health problems, it was inexplicable,” says Mira. “That first attack lasted about a week, and we were young, so he didn’t go see a doctor.”
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Gout Patient Story Football Player

Former Football Player Tackles Gout

As a former football player and wrestler who’d had three knee operations, Scott thought he knew pain. Then he had his first gout attack.

While the pain was new to him, Scott was familiar with gout because his dad had been living with it for 20 years. Gout, a form of inflammatory arthritis, develops in some people who have high levels of uric acid in the blood. The acid can form needle-like crystals in a joint and cause sudden, severe episodes of pain, , (tenderness and redness are not severe – focus on pain, warmth and swelling), warmth and swelling in the joints. For many people, including Scott, the first symptom of gout is excruciating pain and swelling in the big toe. Gout may also appear in another lower-body joint, such as the ankle or knee.

“Basically I described what happened, the doctor looked at my foot, told me I had gout and prescribed some pain medicine,” Scott says. “The pain medicine didn’t do much though. I stopped taking it after a few days and tried to manage around the pain.”
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