3 replies to this topic

[Deathsdestineddeath]

Hey all, I'm Deathsdestineddeath, a 30 year old immortalist and entrepreneur. I was recently diagnosed with gout, which horrifies me; the symptoms are whatever it hurts, but what really terrifies me is the cardiac risks and effects of (chronic) inflamation.

I don't have diabetes, no heart disease, no high blood pressure, eGFR is over 90. My uric acid is slightly above the acceptable range (4.6). Weirdly, I had a kidney stone a month before the first attack.

My leukocytes were sky high (37) during the attack, I was on 30 mg of prednisone for 4 days though.

I'm terrified. I don't want to get heart problems. I don't know what I should be targeting first (I talked to my physician but he didn't give me anything except prednisone to use if I het another flare)

[triffid113]

Well, I suppose everyone's different, but I have gout too. If you don't eat a high protein diet and carefully avoid high fructose corn syrup, you should be fine. I am. I only had a gout episode 10 years ago for a minute (it felt like a needle being stuck in my toe). I have had a flareup recently because your kidneys need thyroid hormone to work efficiently and you need zinc to make thyroid hormone and - many things impede zinc absorption, like phytates (even in coffee) and calcium (I take calcium citrate-magnesium citrate for stage 3 hypertension, rather than drugs). I do not discount that my family may even have a genetic problem absorbing zinc (we are all short, I am 5'2"). So I supplement zinc and it irritates my stomach so sometimes I try to do with less. This time I got edema, and purines build up in my body. It takes awhile to recover because you needs zinc to make HCL to digest zinc. 

 

Moral: keep your kidneys functioning in tip-top shape and your thyroid too, don't eat high fructose corn syrup or any high protein diet (normal protein prolly ok, but I eat prolly a little less than normal protein, just by choice), and you should be fine.

 

If you have an attack, sour cherries take care of it in minutes (so I'm told by other sufferers) and furthermore, sour cherries can also help get rid of whatever irritates your joints in arthritis. I never had a gout attack last more than a minute, and only had them twice in 10 years anyway. There are a LOT of herbal anti-inflammatories if you need them. 

 

Your physician is - {crazy-?}. The standard drug for gout is allopurinol with colchidine.  Allopurinol just does what sour cherries do... they get your kidneys to excrete the uric acid.  My Dad was on that. I avoid drugs where possible (and I'm not talking about the Allopurinol, I am talking about the prednisone...people I've seen on that seem to retain water - the last thing you want if you need to EXCRETE uric acid!).  

 

If you type "Wikipedia uric_acid", it used to say somewhere in that topic that high zinc raises uric_acid and low zinc lowers it. High uric_acid causes gout (which may only occur if you genetically can't excrete purines very well), and low_zinc is associated with multiple sclerosis. So, you will never get M.S. - look at the bright side! 

 

If you are concerned about your heart, your kidneys, and your state of inflammation, as you should be, then remember:

 

You can't control what you can't measure.

 

Try things, get labs, observe results.  You can order your own labs online... way more effective to take control of your own healthcare. I use lifeextension.com for my blood tests online and then I can call their doctors to go over the results with me. Other doctors have high limbo bars about health. They once told my Dad, who had a GFR of close to 50% that he was doing good!  I said, the only way they could say he was doing good is if they qualified "for an 85 year old diabetic with kidney disease"!) Get copies of your own labs, get someone to go over them with you who will compare you to a healthy 20 year old, and order your own labs as questions arise!

[Dorian Grey]

Please check your FERRITIN and Iron Transferrin Saturation (TSAT) levels. These are dirt cheap labs, and your doc shouldn't balk at ordering them.  You can even get them yourself without a doctor through online labs.

 

https://www.lifeexte...0051/iron-panel

 

https://www.lifeexte...itin-blood-test

 

Iron elevation has been associated with gout, as well as other substantial health issues (cancer & heart disease).  Your early onset gout may well be a lifesaving flag to a medical issue (hemochromatosis) many doctors miss as Iron labs are no longer routinely done in most blood testing.  

 

https://academic.oup...12/1550/1784793

 

Near-iron deficiency-induced remission of gouty arthritis

 

Previous evidence supports a role for iron in the pathogenesis of gout. For example, iron, when added to media containing urate crystals, stimulated oxidative stress with subsequent complement and neutrophil activation. Conversely, iron removal inhibited these responses as well as urate-crystal-induced foot pad inflammation in rats in-vivo. The objective of the present study was to investigate whether or not iron removal may improve the outcome of gouty arthritis in humans as well.

Methods. Quantitative phlebotomy was used to remove iron in 12 hyperuricaemic patients with gouty arthritis and maintain their body iron at near-iron deficiency (NID) level (i.e. the lowest body iron store compatible with normal erythropoiesis and therefore absence of anaemia).

Results. During maintenance of NID for 28 months, gouty attacks markedly diminished in every patient, from a cumulative amount of 48 and 53 attacks per year before (year –2, –1), to 32, 11 and 7 during induction (year 0) and maintenance (year +1, +2) of NID, respectively. During NID, attacks were also more often of milder severity.

Conclusions. During a 28-month follow-up, maintenance of NID was found to be safe and beneficial in all patients, with effects ranging from a complete remission to a marked reduction of incidence and severity of gouty attacks.

 

https://arthritis-re...3075-018-1668-y

 

The relationship between ferritin and urate levels and risk of gout

 

"Increased ferritin levels associated with gout and flare frequency. There was evidence of a causal effect of iron and ferritin on urate."

------------------------

 

Warning!  The "Normal Range" for ferritin is set quite high by most labs (300+ for males), however, "OPTIMAL" levels for ferritin are actually far lower (50 to 100).  Do not let your doctor tell you ferritin of 150, 200, 250 is fine and normal.  If your ferritin is this high at 30 years of age, you are absorbing way too much dietary iron and may have genetic hemochromatosis.  

 

Ferritin can sometimes have a false positive elevation when infection or extreme inflammation is present.  This is why you add transferrin saturation (TSAT) to confirm the iron elevation.  Again, with TSAT, you don't want to be in the upper third of the "normal" range.  You want to be in the middle third (20-30).

 

Excess iron is very easy to bleed off, but unfortunately blood donation of therapeutic phlebotomy is the only practical solution.  Donate only "Whole Blood" as the iron is in the red cells.  Plasma and Platelet donation does not remove any iron.  Donate blood in the afternoon, at least an hour after lunch, and only when well hydrated; (not in the morning when you're hypoglycemic and dehydrated). 

 

Research "Ferrotoxic Disease" for more on the dangers of iron elevation, & I hope this (iron reduction) might be an easy fix for you. 

 

https://www.longecit...isease-omnibus/

 

Best Wishes for Better Health.  

Edited by Dorian Grey, 01 May 2022 - 04:41 AM.

[ambivalent]

I would check for candida overgrowth - I had both but now seem to have no problems with either.

 

https://www.yeastinf.../arthritis.html

 

I took 3g of fisetin mixed in with olive oil and lecithin. The above link asserts Biofase, a yeast eater, could clear up the gout.