Posts Tagged Quality-of-Life

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 »