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Two attacks in 3 months?
What dosage of Allopurinol are you on?
How long have you been on it?
Had you had gout attacks before the last two? Or was that your first three months ago?
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3 things have really helped me out so far, helping me feel more in control.. by way of education.
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1. Reading a book called “Beating Gout” cover to cover?
2. Buying a Uric Acid meter to monitor my own UA levels ..?
3. This forum. Wealth of information and help to explain what is happening to you along the road to recovery.
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Unfortunately when taking Allopurinol it tends to get worse before it get's better.?
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Regarding ? controlling the pain? this is hard once the attack has progressed. If you act quickly when that familiar feeling of an attack begins there is a good chance you can break the cycle of your body sending in red blood cells to attack the crystals that have formed. Many here recommend a drug called colchicine?(I think) which I am not familiar with. I have been taking naproxem (anti inflamatory) or voltaren for a few days which seems to help prevent major pain and reduce the duration of attacks if taken early enough.?
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I think the most common advice you will get is.. increase your dose of Allopurinol to 300mg with the intention of reducing your Uric Acid to below 6.0mg/dl.. Allopurinol makes you excrete more of the harmful Uric Acid that causes crystals to form in your joints. Drink lot's of water whilst taking Allopurinol to assist this process and prevent kidney stones from forming. In fact, drink plenty (2-3L per day) of water from here on in anyway. If you get an attack while on Allopurinol, don't stop taking your dosage. (Don't increase it during an attack either).
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As your UA level drops you are prone to more attacks for several months. Perhaps someone can clarify better than me, but my understanding is that this is caused by crystals in your body diluting, which creates some fluctuations or perhaps more movement of UA around your body until you have lowered it to a safe level.
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UA levels can be difficult to measure because they tend to drop drastically during an attack and then taking several weeks to rise again. It's a long process of measuring and understanding UA levels, so it's nice to have a meter at home. (You can find out more about the meters int he forums if interested)
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So what to say to your Doctor?
Ask about having your UA levels monitored regularly if you are not already doing that.
Depending on what dose of Allopurinol you are on, you should find out what the doctor has planned with that medication. E.g. they should be monitoring that your UA levels reach safe thresholds.
It's likely you will have more attacks, in which case you should have some sort of anti inflamatory available to take at the earliest sign of an attack.. so ask about that. Once your current attack has subsided that is.
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You mentioned that you cut down on Soda.. Someone else may have comments, you may want to consider cutting that out completely for a while. Others may like to comment but, there is a lot of discussion around the strong relationship between sucrose / fructose and gout that you might want to read a little more about.?
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Best of luck, I hope you are feeling better soon.
Thanks for the response. I went to the doctor and had more blood tests which came up fine. A specialist said that generally dizzyness tends to subside over time as your body becomes accustomed to it. So sticking with it for now..
I had joint pain in my toes all through my teens and early twenties. Has X-rays and specialist visits and was diagnosed as joint degeneration due to trauma at the time.. at that stage it was just stiff and aches without swelling..
It wasnt until I was about 32 that I had the first of what I would call a “real” gout attack.. had me literally crawling around the house, and put me off work for two weeks.
Looking back, I think there were plenty of warnings.. because my original pain that I had for over ten years has gone now with proper modetaration, and only replaced by the severe attacks. In hindsight, it may have been gout all along and missed at that time, due to my young age.
I think statistics revolve around accute attacks rather than all the other similarities of symptoms that people have which are lurking in the background. Obviously science only cares about what it can prove with evidence.
