Gout is one of the typical diseases of the bones and joints. If before, this disease only appeared in the elderly, now the disease is increasingly showing signs of rejuvenation. The disease not only makes it difficult for the patient to live, but also causes many complications that are extremely dangerous to health.
Table of Contents
General learning about gout
What is gout?
Gout, also known as gout, occurs due to a disorder of the metabolism of purines, causing the formation and deposition of urate crystals in joints as well as in many other organs in the body.
Uric acids are substances formed in the body, they are eliminated through urine and feces. However, for people with gout, the amount of uric acid in the blood is often higher than allowed and causes sudden attacks of gout.
Signs identify gout
According to experts, the signs of gout in each stage will be different. As follows:
At the beginning
This is the first stage when the disease has just started and there are almost no symptoms except for high levels of uric acid in the blood. After that, the patient will notice a number of other symptoms such as:
- The thumb is sore, swollen, and tender.
- Pain usually comes after having had a physical effect on the pain or after a drink.
- The most vulnerable places are usually in the ankle joints, knees, feet, elbows, wrists or small joints located all over the body.
At this point, urate salt crystals begin to form and accumulate in the joints, causing more pronounced symptoms. According to statistics, most patients often relapse pain many times within a few years depending on eating habits and scientific activities, usually 1-3 years.
If the patient neglects and does not actively treat actively, it will easily cause acute gout pain and damage joints.
In the middle stage
During this period, the results measured uric acid concentration was very high and exceeded the permitted threshold, facilitating the formation of urate crystals in the toes. At this stage, the patient will feel severe and constant joint pain, unlike the first phase that the pain usually appears suddenly and disappears after rest.
In the final stage
When the disease reaches this stage, it also means that the symptoms of the disease have progressed very seriously, the manifestations of swelling, pain, and redness are evident. Among them, there are two most typical symptoms in this stage which are:
- Appearance of tophi : uric acid concentration is too high, causing crystals to link together to form urate salt crystals. Day after day, more and more they accumulate, turning into large, red, hot, and painful tophi in many locations on the body such as: toes, fingers, knees, ear rings, elbows …
- Impairment and loss of mobility : When the disease is not treated early, the onset of symptoms can be overcome, by this stage the symptoms are too severe and the patient loses the ability to move, walk. normalized by too much pain, even causing permanent disability.
Who are most susceptible to gout?
According to the survey of experts, there are 5 subjects most susceptible to gout are:
Women at menopause
Women entering menopause will have a high risk of gout due to sudden changes in the hormone estrogen in the body. This inadvertently disrupts uric acid metabolism, preventing them from being eliminated from the body but accumulating gradually.
Not only that, the risk of gout will be higher if women have unscientific eating habits, lots of sweets, fried, greasy, spicy …
People who eat unhealthy
Gout can appear in everyone, especially those who eat unhealthy foods are the most susceptible. Especially the gentlemen who regularly drink alcohol and eat a lot of drinks such as red meat, animal organs … the risk of gout will be very high.
Men after age 40
According to experts, out of the total number of people with gout, more than 80% of people with gout are men over the age of 40. This is explained by the unscientific, regular eating habits. drink alcohol, eat a lot of animal protein, especially animal organs, are lazy to exercise, exercise, smoke … and many other unscientific lifestyle habits, so the risk of disease is higher.
Overweight people are obese
Scientific studies have shown that being overweight has a greater risk of gout than people with a standard weight. The reason is that the body of obese people will have a large amount of fat, hindering the excretion of uric acid from the body, causing them to accumulate in the blood every day.
In addition, obesity comes from unscientific eating, eating a lot of protein foods, and frying with a lot of grease will speed up the rate of gout.
Gout is divided into several types?
Currently, experts have divided gout into 3 main groups for easy classification and treatment, including:
- Primary gout : This type of gout occurs mainly in cases caused by genetic factors, increasing endogenous purine synthesis, increasing uric acid production.
- Secondary gout : Gout in this form often occurs in cases of increased uric acid due to eating a lot of foods containing purines, due to increased endogenous purine degradation in some diseases or drugs, kidney disease. reduce uric acid excretion.
- Congenital gout (Lesh-Nyhan’s disease) is a fairly rare disease. The cause of the disease is due to the lack of congenital enzymes, so from a young age the blood has a high concentration of uric acid, when growing up makes the symptoms of the disease worse than normal.
The cause of gout
Currently, there are many causes of gout, including the 10 most common causes, including:
- Due to genetics, genetics : If parents or family members have gout, the genetic risk to the child’s life is 20%. These patients have increased endogenous purine synthesis and increase uric acid levels.
- Due to gender : Men are at greater risk than women. Because according to a latest survey shows that men are often subjects with less scientific lifestyles and diets, frequent alcohol and smoking …
- People who drink a lot of alcohol, beer, and alcoholic beverages : alcoholic beverages such as alcohol, beer … will cause uric acid metabolism disorders in the blood and increase the risk of gout. A statistic shows that the number of people with gout due to drinking alcohol up to 75 – 84%.
- People who are obese : People who are overweight and obese are 5 times more likely to develop gout than normal people. The reason is that the concentration of uric acid in the blood is always high but the ability to eliminate it is poor.
- Due to long-term use of antibiotics: Some patients have to regularly use diuretics such as Thiazid, Aspirin, Parkinson’s disease medicine … will cause side effects that inhibit the renal excretion of uric acid. It disturbs the metabolism of uric acid and results in gout.
- Due to high consumption of processed foods: Canned and processed foods that contain a lot of preservatives and contain lots of purines are also the main causes of gout.
- Due to the body contaminated with lead: Lead infection for a long time is also the cause of the uric acid metabolism disorder in the blood, leading to gout.
- Organ transplantation: The cases of patients who have to perform transplant or replace organs on the body will increase the risk of gout higher than normal people.
- People taking vitamins containing the active ingredient niacin are also prone to gout.
- Some other diseases: People with diabetes or disorders of lipid metabolism … also increase the risk of gout.
Dangerous complications of gout
In addition to the pain that occurs suddenly and the increasing frequency, lasting, people with gout will also face extremely dangerous complications when the disease enters a severe stage such as:
Disability of joints
When tophi appears with gradual joint degeneration, the risk of joint deformation is unavoidable. At this time, the joints of the hands and feet will be deformed, hindering the operation of the joints that doctors often refer to as banana or tubers.
Moreover, as tophi becomes larger and larger, it will compress blood vessels and nervous system, causing a variety of vascular and peripheral nerve diseases. At a certain point when the skin covering them is no longer strong enough, they will break open, leaking urate salt crystals and allowing bacteria to penetrate inside.
At this time, when being taken to the hospital, the patient’s condition was extremely serious, the ulcer could not hold the joint, so it was imperative to remove the joint, amputate the limb to save the patient’s life.
Causes kidney diseases
The phenomenon of tophi rupture can cause urate salt crystals to be deposited in neighboring organs such as the heart, kidneys, brain, blood vessels … extremely dangerous. In particular, there have been many cases of tophi rupture and directly affect the kidneys, forming diseases such as glomerulonephritis, renal slit inflammation, tubular obstruction, water retention, kidney stones …
At this time, if the patient still does not find that he or she has kidney problems, still using drugs to treat gout will cause the kidneys to poison, increase the risk of kidney stones, even kidney failure. This is also the reason that gout and kidney failure are two diseases that often go together.
Increased risk of stroke
For people with chronic, long-term gout can also increase the risk of stroke and stroke higher than the average person. Explaining this, experts believe that when urate crystals are deposited in the blood vessels, it will directly affect the vasculature, slow down blood circulation, long-term will cause myocarditis, endocarditis. , damage to heart valves, urate accumulates in cerebral vessels … extremely dangerous and difficult to treat.
Many cases even cause death if disease symptoms appear but not treated promptly.
How to distinguish gout from pseudo-gout
There have been many cases of mistaking gout as fake gout or other arthritis diseases , making treatment ineffective and making the disease turn chronic very dangerous and difficult to cure completely.
So, to distinguish between gout and fake gout, patients need to know some of the following information:
Gout
- Deposition of needle-shaped uric acid crystals in joints or soft tissues.
- The first place of gout onset is usually the tip of the thumb, ankle, heel, instep, knee, elbow, forearm.
- Gout attacks usually appear at night with severe painful swelling over the next 24 hours.
- The diet of gout patients is very strict, absolutely do not eat too much protein-containing foods, contain purines, no alcohol …
- The main treatment for gout is to find ways to lower uric acid levels in the blood.
Fake gout
- It is the deposition of rhombic calcium salts in joints
- Pain will first begin in the knee and large joint
- The degree of joint pain will be mild and gradually increase, not as intense as the acute gout attacks.
- The fake gout diet does not have to be as strict as gout sufferers, it is not necessary to abstain from many things.
- The main treatment is to overcome the symptoms, not to completely overcome the false gout.
It can be seen that besides the same symptoms, but in essence, these are completely two different diseases. Therefore, in order to be able to accurately diagnose and give the most suitable treatment direction, the patient needs to visit the musculoskeletal specialist hospital to be properly treated.
Measures to diagnose gout
To accurately diagnose whether the symptoms of swelling, pain and redness in the joints are gout or not, the patient is best to seek the assistance of a doctor.
Usually, the steps to diagnose gout include the following:
- Option 1 : Carry out joint aspiration and search for urate salt crystals by microscope. If urate salts are found, you have gout and vice versa.
- Method 2 : Patients with severe pain symptoms will be given Colchicine, if the drug works to relieve pain, the risk of gout is very high.
- Method 3 : If the doctor suspects that the patient has acute gout but the uric acid index in the blood is not high, the blood test will be performed to make the diagnosis more accurate.
In addition, depending on the patient’s symptoms at the present time, it will be assigned to perform various diagnostic measures such as joint X-ray, CT joint scanner … From the diagnostic test results. guess, the doctor will give analysis and specific treatment regimen.
Gout treatments
Principles of gout treatment
For the best treatment of gout, the main treatment direction aims to:
- Treatment of arthritis when onset of acute gout attacks.
- Prophylaxis of recurrence of gout attacks and deposition of urate crystals. Complications can also be prevented through strict control of blood uric acid levels below 360 mmol / l (60 mg / l) in the absence of tophi and below 320 mmol / l (50). mg / l) in the case of tophi.
Specific treatment process
Currently, there are many ways to treat gout, which can be mentioned a number of measures such as:
Use medicine to treat gout
There are many types of gout medicines , but depending on the condition of the disease, the patient will be assigned to use each appropriate drug. Accordingly, most cases of gout are prescribed Colchinine Corticosteroid and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. These are both effective and immediate reliefs from acute gout pain.
In addition, for gout conditions that are not relieved due to lifestyle changes, ineffective diet and transition to chronic stage, drugs of the inhibitory group will be prescribed. forming uric acid, uric acid excretion drugs in blood, urine such as Allopurinol, Febuxostat … or drugs that support urate destruction in the blood.
Note:
- In case of acute gout pain suddenly and high frequency, persistently persist, seek medical intervention to fix it promptly.
- Focus on overcoming the symptoms of chronic gout, because if not cured, it can cause diseases such as kidney failure, failure, body edema due to water retention.
- Use of drugs should comply with the prescription of the doctor because the abuse of gout medicines is easy to cause complications and dangerous side effects such as affecting the digestive system, damaged excretory system …
Surgical treatment
Surgical treatment of tophi is the use of surgical treatment. It is also the last resort indicated when medical treatments are not effective. Tophi seed surgery is usually indicated in the following cases:
- Gout attacks are accompanied by severe ulcers
- Tophi is superinfected
- Tophi is growing larger, tense, red hot and is predicted to break.
Treat gout with natural herbs
Currently, to support the treatment of gout early, when the symptoms are not too serious, many people choose to treat with herbs found in nature. The advantage of this method is that it brings a clear therapeutic effect while ensuring safety, without causing side effects to the patient’s health.
Some herbs are effective for gout treatment according to the advice of experts:
Cure gout with hy thiem grass
Hy thiem grass, also known in folklore, is a golden flower dog, this is a medicine commonly used in traditional medicine. According to scientific studies, the bitter herbs Daturosid, Orientin and Dimethylquercetin are extremely good in reducing the concentration of uric acid in the blood quickly.
Not only that, but Thiem hyena is also capable of cleaning the layers of urate salts that are deposited in the joints. Reduces acidity and creates an alkaline environment around joints, helps to erode urate crystals, turning them into free uric acids that slowly dissolve and be eliminated from the body through urine.
Cure gout with wild wolves
Wild wolf is an herb that is highly appreciated by experts in traditional medicine in the treatment of gout. The wild wolf has a spicy, neutral taste, effectively reducing swelling, inflammation, antibacterial, and strengthening the immune system, so it is extremely effective in treating gout.
Cure gout with perilla leaves
Perilla is a very familiar plant, effective in treating gout without having to look far away. Scientific studies have proven that perilla leaves contain many vitamins A, C, iron, essential oils and calcium … have diuretic effects, improve uric acid elimination function in the blood effectively.
The essence of perilla leaves is a medicine that is commonly used in Traditional Medicine for its analgesic, anti-inflammatory and vascular dilatation effects. Thanks to that, the treatment of gout with perilla leaves will certainly bring very good results.
Cure gout with turmeric
Turmeric is a plant that is known for its effective anti-inflammatory and antibacterial effects. Therefore, the application of turmeric in many remedies, especially gout.
According to some scientific studies show that curcumin in turmeric has the ability to inhibit the production of the pain-causing active substance, prostaglandin. Thanks to that, it helps to reduce the amount of inflammatory enzymes in the body, quickly cut the aches and pains of recurrent gout.
Cure gout with guise leaves
According to traditional medicine, active ingredients in guise leaves are effective in treating gout very effectively. Because guise leaves are spicy, warm, contain active ingredients to relieve pain, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and quickly recover damage to the joints caused by gout.
Cure gout with betel leaves
Betel leaf is not a popular herb, used in many remedies that need antibacterial and anti-inflammatory, including gout. According to scientific studies, there are currently 2 types of betel leaves, including large-leaf betel and cinnamon. The 2.4 content of oil in betel leaves has the effect of restoring damage to the joints, effectively fighting inflammation and reducing pain.
Diet for gout patients
To support the best treatment of gout, patients need a scientific diet as follows:
- Avoid eating foods containing high-protein purines such as meat, fish, shrimp, crab, red meats such as beef, lamb, goat meat … animal organs …
- Avoid foods high in carbohydrates such as cereals, breads, rice, etc.
- Avoid eating fruits or foods with a sour taste such as mustard greens, bamboo shoots, mangoes, toads, tamarind … because they will speed up uric acid synthesis in the body.
- Absolutely do not use alcohol in the treatment of disease.
- Do not eat fatty, fried, spicy foods, fast foods, canned foods …
Instead, increase your intake of the following foods:
- Foods rich in vitamin C, white meat, fruits and vegetables like broccoli, strawberry oranges …
- Replace with foods containing good protein such as peanuts, tofu, skim milk …
- Prefer to eat steamed, boiled instead of fried or fried
- Drink plenty of water, at least 2 liters of water per day to aid in the elimination of uric acid from the body.
Can gout be completely cured?
This is a problem that many patients wonder when they encounter any disease, not just gout. The answer is that gout cannot go away on its own, it only gets worse and recurs many times if the conditions are right.
The principle of treatment is to overcome symptoms, control the concentration of uric acid in the blood to inhibit the precipitation of urate salt crystals. Treatment is often based on medications that reduce uric acid levels and relieve pain in the joints.
If the disease is detected and treated promptly with the right method, the disease can be controlled from 90 – 95% of symptoms. At this time, the amount of urate salt crystals is deposited less so the treatment will be easier than those with chronic gout.
At this time, if the metabolic disorder symptoms have been overcome, they return to the normal state. At the same time, urate salt crystals that have been cleaned at the joints are considered to be gout free.
Therefore, it is important in the treatment of gout to make a diagnosis and initiate treatment as soon as possible. Besides, even though the symptoms have been cured, the patient still has to maintain a scientific lifestyle and eating habits to avoid relapse.
Effective measures to prevent gout
Derived from the cause of the disease, patients can self-regulate their living habits and diet to actively prevent gout. Such as:
- Control your own weight, if you are overweight and obese, plan to lose weight and build a more scientific diet. Because according to scientific studies, weight loss also works to reduce the concentration of uric acid in the blood, preventing the occurrence of gout attacks.
- Stop drinking if you care about your health. The body can tolerate too much alcohol over the long term just making you more susceptible to gout.
- Every day drink at least 2-3 liters of water because it will help dissolve uric acid in the blood, easily eliminated from the body through the urinary tract. This will prevent the risk of long-term accumulation of uric acid in the body.
- People over the age of 30 should avoid bad habits that can make sudden changes such as hot weather, cold shower, and body shock … This is the cause of uric acid metabolism disorder, urate salt stimulation. formation.
In short, gout is a disease that easily occurs from daily living habits and diet. If not detected and treated in time, the disease will easily cause dangerous complications, even permanently losing your mobility. So, change your mindset and behavior for the better to avoid the risk of gout.
