The number of gout patients is on the rise, especially often seen in the middle aged men. The outbreak usually starts at the lower limb joints (especially the big toes and knees), which causing swelling, redness, burning pain and other symptoms which attack repeatedly and produce severe pain.

When uric acid concentration exceeds the normal level, it forms as sodium salt and deposits into the joints, soft tissues, cartilages and kidneys, creating tissue inflammatory reactions which are the main cause of gout. If not treated early and completely, things will be getting worse with joint swelling, deformity, stiffness and nodules before becoming kidney stones, renal failure, coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, urinary tract stones and other organ dysfunction, all which will pose a serious threat to the patient’s life.

Although gout cases are not reported frequently, there are far more patients than you might believe. The most well known one is Hong Kong entertainer Eric Tsang, who was previously photographed using a wheelchair to move around because he couldn’t use his legs. It’s later confirmed that his love for drinking was what caused him to suffer from gout in the first place.

Malaysian chef Ismail Ahmad also suffered from gout and used it as inspiration for his cooking. Since then, he has made big changes in his restaurant’s menu, reducing meat and increasing vegetables so that the customers are able to enjoy a healthy and delicious dining experience.

In fact, cases of gout often occur all around us, but reports on this topic are limited. Furthermore, general public tends to ignore it simply because they have very little knowledge about gout. If we continue to ignore this illness and remain ignorant of how serious it is, society will eventually be filled with gout sufferers.

Defeating gout is something that we need to start as soon as possible. If you or your loved ones are feeling symptoms of gout, you should seek immediate medical attention in order to deal with this illness before it can get too far.

Also known as metabolic arthritis, gout is caused when a person’s metabolism weakens, resulting in excess uric acid that it is unable to excrete normally or efficiently. This harmful uric acid is deposited into the human joints and after some time forms uric acid crystals and causes a gout flare-up.

This disease is most often seen in middle aged males. In beginning stages, the pain doesn’t last long and usually disappear by itself in a few days. However, this is only the beginning of the agony.

Gout has 4 stages in total – hyperuricemia(asymptomatic gout), early stage(acute gout), mid stage(inter-critical gout) and late stage(chronic tophaceous gout). In the earlier stage, there are no clinical symptoms of gout besides a high blood uric acid value. As such, most patients are unaware of or choose to ignore even found this symptoms. After that, the pain will begin to attack the patient’s joints, usually starting at the big toe which starts to swell painfully along with redness, warmth and tenderness. The piercing knife-like pain is so strong that makes the patient always has sleepless nights.

At the mid stage, also known as inter-critical gout, the pain will spread to the fingers, toes, wrist, ankle, knee and other parts of the body. Then, the surrounding soft tissue and bone will also be affected with varying degrees of damage and dysfunction. As the crystallization continues to build up, it slowly forms stone-like structures called “tophi”.  At this point, the kidney’s performance will begin to deteriorate.

In the end, tophi will increase continuously to the point that it can easily rupture out of the crystals, resulting in serious deformity and dysfunction of the patient’s joints. This can severely affect the patient’s daily life as they will be in constant pain. In addition, the urate constantly deposited into the kidney which will eventually turn into kidney stones, causing problems like edema, oliguria, proteinuria, nocturia, high blood pressure, anemia and more. The kidneys will be damaged and begin to deteriorate, leading to kidney failure which can be life threatening for the patient.