Posts Tagged Gout Help
Questions Being Raised About the Importance of Diet on Gout
Posted by Victor Konshin in Diet on August 27th, 2009
An article that will appear in the September Issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association calls into question the long held belief that those with gout need to maintain a “purine-restricted” diet. This article points out that some foods, such as some vegetables are very high in purines, yet research has consistently shown that consumption of these vegetables is strongly correlated with a reduction in uric acid levels and in gout attacks. Research has also shown that beer is strongly correlated with higher instances of gout even though modern beers often have very low levels of purines.
Although diet has long been assumed to be associated with hyperuricemia, this association remains to be verified. Studies that have reviewed the relationship of diet and hyperuricemia have found it to be a difficult and complex issue.
FDA Rejects New Gout Drug and Approve an Old One
Posted by Victor Konshin in Gout Treatments, New Research on August 4th, 2009
It was starting to look like 2009 was the year going banner year for new gout drugs. That all came to a holt on Sunday as the FDA rejected the application for Savient Pharmaceuticals, Inc.’s drug, Krystexxa® (also called puricase or pegloticase). This new drug used an enzyme not found in humans that breaks down uric acid in the body. To prevent the body rejecting the foreign enzyme it is “locked up” in a molecular “cage”. This cage allowed uric acid to flow in but blocks the immune system from attacking the enzyme (see, New Gout Drugs – Coming to a Pharmacy Near You).
Interestingly, the FDA did not have any complaints about the drug itself and found that the drug was safe and effective. In fact, the FDA’s advisory board voted 14 to 1 to approve the drug. However, the FDA raised concerns that the drug that was studied was created using a different manufacturing process than the drug that would be released to the public. Due to concerns that this different manufacturing process could change the safety or effectiveness of the drug, the FDA rejected the drug until the manufacturer proves that the different manufacturing method resulted in a drug that was also safe and effective.
Read the rest of this entry »
Is Febuxostat (Uloric®) Really Better Than Allopurinol?
Posted by Victor Konshin in Gout Treatments on July 3rd, 2009
UK’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence doesn’t think so. In December it issued guidance that the benefits febuxostat (sold in the US under the brand name Uloric®) have not been clearly demonstrated.
The argument is that the pharmaceutical companies tested febuxostat against a fixed dose of 300mg of allopurinol per day. Even though this is the way most doctors prescribe allopurinol, it is not the best way to use it according the expert “best practices” guidelines. The appropriate way is to adjust the dose of allopurinol until uric acid levels are lowered to below 6mg/dL (333µm/L). Allopurinol can safely be prescribed up to 900mg/day.
Because the pharmaceutical companies did not show that febuxostat was more effective than allopurinol when allopurinol is used this way, and because of the cost and other risks, they concluded that for most people it best to just stick with allopurinol.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Most Misused Gout Drug, Colchicine
Posted by Victor Konshin in Gout Treatments on May 19th, 2009
Gout is a disease that medical science obsessed over for, well, since medical science came into being. Only in the last fifty years has gout become a “forgotten” disease. Through this long and amazing history, gout has had a more or less faithful companion: the autumn crocus flower. It’s from the bulb of this flower that colchicine comes.
Some reports say that colchicine has been in use for over 6000 years while other reports say its a much newer drug that has only been in use for 2000 years. Regardless, it is still considered to be a first line drug by many doctors. Unfortunately, those doctors are grossly out-of-date. Not only in using colchicine first, but also in how they use it…
The Impact of Gout on Your Quality-of-Life, Finances and Family
Posted by Victor Konshin in General, Gout Treatments on April 27th, 2009
If you have gout, you understand that gout has a definite impact on your quality-of-life during an attack — life sucks. The pain can be unbearable. Researchers have looked at this question more quantitatively though and come up with some interesting findings.
As we know, gout is caused by uric acid crystalizing in our joints, which causes an immune response (if you don’t know this, see, Gout Basics). Even when you are not in the middle of a gout attack, if you have high uric acid levels, crystals are always forming and dissolving and not just in your joints, but all over your body. These crystals are seen as invaders by your immune system which causes it to respond. This causes your immune system to alway be in a heightened state of alert and it causes inflammation in your body which can cause many deadly diseases (see, Is Gout Dangerous). But the problems do not stop there…
Read the rest of this entry »
Gout in Women
Posted by Victor Konshin in General on April 16th, 2009
A friend of mine once asked, “Gout? Isn’t that the old, rich, fat man’s disease?” Besides being uncharitable, this statement is wrong on pretty much all counts.
- People are developing gout at a much younger age now days thanks to the high-fructose corn syrup and other unhealthy dietary habits, but it is still rare for anyone under the age of thirty to get gout – hardly ‘old’.
- Now days, you don’t need to be rich to live a sedentary lifestyle and eat the unhealthy foods that helped gout develop its reputation as being a rich person’s disease.
- Gout is mostly influenced by genetics, so even those that are not “fat” can get gout.
- It’s not just a man’s disease….
Gout: Not Just for Men Anymore
Gout has long been considered male disease because estrogen plays a powerful role in keeping uric acid levels down in women. However, once women hit menopause, estrogen levels decrease and uric acid levels rise. In fact, after menopause, women are just as likely to develop gout as men of the same age.
Read the rest of this entry »
Alternative Medicine for Gout
Posted by Victor Konshin in Alternative Medicine on April 15th, 2009
Gout is the only disease in all of medicine that has been correctly identified as a unique disease throughout all of recorded medical history. For over four thousand years doctors and healers have recognized pain and swelling of the big toe as most likely being gout. People often ask me what the “scientific name” for gout is. It’s just ‘gout’ – there has never been any need to rename it. Things like heart attacks where given more specific names like, myocardial infarction, when our understanding increased, but there has never been any need to rename gout.
In the past, gout was a disease that doctors and healers obsessed over. The disease tended to affected mostly kings and noblemen because they had the means to live a lifestyle that made gout more prevalent - peasants rarely developed gout, even if they where genetically predisposed to gout because their sparse diet and over all fitness (from really hard work) cancelled out this predisposition.
This meant that anyone that came up with an effective treatment, or better yet, a cure for gout would be on the fast track to riches as the wealthy would be willing to pay handsomely for a solution to their gout pain. This resulted in a myriad of claims about gout treatments and cures, many of which not only still exist today but are widely believed as being helpful for gout. Of course, some of these ancient doctors actually did stumble on substances that have proven to be helpful for gout, but most just do not work.
In this article I will look at some of these treatments and look at which have scientific backing, which do not and which are potentially dangerous.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Truth About Homeopathy
Posted by Victor Konshin in Alternative Medicine, Gout Treatments on April 15th, 2009
I am going to start by saying something that is going to upset a lot of people: homeopathy is a fraud. Homeopathy started about five hundred years ago under the idea that “what makes a man ill also cures him.” This idea struggled until it reached it reached a peak in popularity in the 1800s. However, it was criticized heavily by mainstream scientists and was eventually discredited to the point where there where few followers by the 1920s. However, in the 1970s, sensing a commercial opportunity, homeopathy underwent an worldwide revival. Unfortunately, homeopathy does not work. This is not an opinion by the way, but a statement that is backed up by two things, 1) the scientific research and 2) common sense.
Read the rest of this entry »
Gout and the Sleep Apnea Connection
Posted by Burton Abrams in General, Gout Treatments on April 14th, 2009
There is a frequently overlooked factor that can cause an acute increase in the concentration of uric acid in the blood as well as increased likelihood of its precipitation as MSU (monosodium urate or uric acid crystals. See, Gout Basics for background). That factor is the reduction of the concentration of oxygen in the blood, which occurs in an individual suffering from sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea is the repeated cessation of breathing for many seconds at a time during sleep, when the muscles lining the airway relax enough to allow it to close, until the brain jolts them to reopen. The resulting reduction of oxygen in the blood causes the cells in the body to undergo a process of disintegration, which leads to their generation of excess uric acid. Once the uric acid is formed, the process is irreversible, even when breathing restarts. With each apneic period, more and more uric acid is fed into the blood, faster than the kidneys can dispose of it. Furthermore, the increased ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen in the blood makes the blood more acidic, so that its ability to hold uric acid in solution is reduced and MSU is more likely to precipitate. These processes were described in medical journal literature about twenty years ago, and subsequent literature has confirmed that sleep apnea leads to excess uric acid in the blood and in the urine.
Read the rest of this entry »
-
Get The Book:
Partners:
Blog Search Engine
Self Help from SelfGrowth.com- -SelfGrowth.com is the most complete guide to information about Self Help on the Internet.
