Gout Pal Interactive

Hmmmm.

Has somebody been peeking at my knees?

No mine are much sexier. And occasionally more swollen

Click the picture to see more.

Are You Itching For Gout?

I wrote about gout and itching recently.
In fact this was in response to a message from a reader wondering if many gout sufferers experienced itching.

Perhaps I was bogged down with creating this interactive site.
I usually check through my sources, or google for information, before responding.
As soon as I looked, I found a few references to gout itching.

In particular, one source (http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/gout/goutintr.html) set me thinking. I’d been planning to review the bandolier information to check for useful snippets. Checking out the following paragraph about acute gout attacks gave me a few ideas:

A single peripheral joint is almost always involved in all initial episodes, and most often this is the metatarsalophalangeal joint between wrist and finger. Typically local irritation and aching proceeds to tissues becoming swollen, red, hot, shiny and extremely painful. The pain is often describes as the worst ever experienced. By 24 hours inflammation is maximal, and it then resolves slowly over a week or so, often with itching and flaking of overlying skin.

I’m a bit confused about the joint - I assume they mean the big toe joint, though I get attacks in the hand and fingers. Apart from this, it set me thinking about other people’s gout symptoms.

In keeping with my desire to find out how gout really affects ordinary people like us, I decided on a survey of gout symptoms.

Please fill in the form below. If your symptom is not listed, please add a comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.

Remember, this is not a completely scientific survey - it’s about how you feel. I’ve added slight and serious choices rather than any attempt at a scale of suffering. As a guide:
Slight means a symptom you have noticed might be connected with gout, but you cope with it reasonably well.
Serious means a symptom you are convinced is caused by gout, and it significantly reduces your quality of life.

The first question is about which gout symptoms you’ve experienced. The second question is about which joints were affected. Please tick as many boxes as you want.

If you think I’ve missed something from the survey, please let me know via the public comment box below, or privately via my contact page (button near top of each page). In fact, I’d love any comments or questions about gout symptoms.

I exclude tophi from this survey. I will do a separate survey on tophaceous gout soon.