Posts Tagged gout myths
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.
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.
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Gout: The Forgotten Disease
Posted by Victor Konshin in General on June 2nd, 2009
I think what’s most amazing about medical science is how small it’s focus has become. I’m not talking about the scale of medical science, or the focus on making people healthy, but on the scale at which it is studying the complex mechanisms of the human body.
Over the past few hundred years medical science has gone from looking at the structure of the body, to its organs, down to the cells that make up those organs and now down to the most tiny and intricate molecular machines that make everything actually work. Molecules so small and sophisticated that ever the most advanced microscopes in the world can only view them dimly and we are only just beginning to grasp how they actually function.
However, this all seems to be changing. This focus on the very small has obscured a larger reality – that the human body is a large, unimaginably complex and integrated machine – a single machine. If something is broken in one part of that machine, the function of the whole suffers.
I think that more and more researchers are starting to get their heads out of their microscopes and starting to look at what happens to the whole machine when those microscopic machines misbehave. And I think this will be the next great step forward for medical science.
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…
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.
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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.
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Why is Gout so Often Mismanaged
Posted by Victor Konshin in General on April 13th, 2009
I often quote the statistic that 78% of doctors do not properly manage gout. This statistic is true (based on the research study that reported it) but the big question is, why? This article with take a look at this question.
First off, let me start by saying that I am not someone that bashes doctors and the medical community or says things like, “all doctors are arrogant, lazy, over-paid idiots.” Though, as with any profession, there will always be some that fit this description, most doctors are caring, compassionate, highly competent people that do a fantastic job. The problem however, is that the medical profession is the victim of technology, its own success and its failures…
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Top 10 Gout Myths
Posted by Victor Konshin in Alternative Medicine, Diet, General, Gout Treatments on April 2nd, 2009
I am always taken aback at the number and persistence of gout myths. Just read a few Internet web pages on gout and gout treatments and it won’t take you long to find contradicting information – even from supposedly reputable sites. These myths are one of the key reasons why the quality of gout care for gout has fallen so much over the past few decades. Bad information keeps getting passed on – over and over. This article will help you understand some of these myths and learn the truth.
Myth #1: Gout is curable. There are tons of websites out there that promise “gout cures” if only you send them some amount of money. The truth is, that for 90% of cases, gout is a genetic condition. This is why gout often runs in families. Genetic conditions cannot be cured, only managed. The other 10 % of cases are called secondary gout. These are usually caused by some underlying medical condition. Some of these conditions can be very serious such as lymphoma or kidney disease. Only a small number of cases are truly ‘curable’. These cases are usually caused by high blood pressure medications called diuretics or extreme obesity. If you have gout, your doctor should check for a secondary cause of gout, if none is found, then you have a genetic condition that can only be managed.
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