GOUTY ARTHRITIS

WHAT IS GOUTY ARTHRITIS?The nature of Gouty Arthritis is most easily understood and controlled, as it stems from a partially known set of causes. It is a defect in the ability to rid oneself of uric acid, thus causing uric acid crystals to lodge in the collagen tissue matrices throughout portions of the body, especially near and around the joints. It also causes kidney stones, high blood pressure and other health problems in some folks, but it rarely afflicts women or children. As Osteoporosis is predominately a woman’s disease, gout is predominantely a man’s disease, the ratio being about 19 men for 1 women. Ninety-five percent of gout victims, therefore, are men. The few women who have gout show signs and symptoms after menopause, so there must surely be a hormonal component to gout. Children are almost never affected. Up until the 1960’s gout was a terrible disease without much help from the medical profession. One had attacks of fever, chills
and excruciating needle-like pains. The gout victim suffered for weeks at a time. Eventually the attacks of gout became more frequent and eventually disabling, with kidney disease, heart
disease and many other complications setting in5.

WHAT CAUSES GOUTY ARTHRITIS?Those who suffer from gout have a condition known as Hyperuricemia, which simply means too much uric acid in the blood serum. If you placed some of the patient’s blood on a string and let it dry, there would form linked crystals of uric acid. These when deposited in the wrong places in the body create joint inflammation, kidney blockage and lumps called “tophi5.”Uric acid does not easily dissolve in water, and blood is composed mainly of water. One gram of salt will dissolve in about one-half teaspoon of water; one gram of sugar in about one-tenth teaspoon of water. To dissolve the same amount of uric acid takes at least two quarts of water! We can easily produce uric acid, and our bodies are geared to conserving it, instead of excreting it freely through our kidneys with other waste products. The kidneys remove it from the blood, and hen restore most of it back to the bloodstream so that it can go on to other organs for use. It may also be that many gout victims are more efficient in doing this filtering/restoring, but that is only speculation. The extra uric acid must lodge someplace, and that’s where the pain comes in, when the body decides to deposit the small uric acid crystals in a collagen matrix, especially near a moving joint. Research by German scientists have pointed to mycoplasms as a source of gout. The mycoplasms produce a substance called ubiquiton, which causes the precipitation of uric acid. Interestingly, mycoplasms have also been indicted as a source of Rheumatoid Disease by Thomas McPherson Brown, M.D.

HOW CAN GOUTY ARTHRITIS BE PREVENTED AND/OR TREATED?

Very little is known about what starts and stops gout attacks. Emotional upset or stress can surely bring on an attack. Without question, diet can control attacks, causing it to be greater or lesser depending upon what is eaten. Perhaps weather changes or drugs may precipitate an attack. There are no general rules that apply to everyone5. Besides the diet — and probably related to the diet — is the fact of tissue acidity/alkalinity balances. It is also important that sufficient thyroid be produced or available to the metabolism. Not enough is known about the metabolic defects that bring about gout and so, other than inheriting a healthy metabolism, and
maintaining other healthy conditions, such as diet and relief of stress, appropriate physicial exercise and so on, few recommendations can be given for preventing the condition known as Gouty Arthritis. At least one person -- and probably more than one -- has restored this bodily functions to a healthy condition and found that his gout had disappeared.
If you do find yourself with Gouty Arthritis, there is a wellknown and accepted diet and medications that can be used to control the affliction. However, according to Warren Levin, M.D., "One of the well-recognized triggers for attacks of gout is a weight-reduction
program emphasizing low carbohydrate. This results in the patient going into ketosis as the body burns fatty-acid residues for energy. [Ketosis is a condition of too many ketones in the body, any compound containing the carbonyl group, CO.] These are ordinarily harmless 'clinkers' from the body's energy furnaces, although in excess they cause ketoacidosis as, for instance, severe diabetes where the body is unable to burn carbohydrates as well. The normal mechanism of excretion of ketone bodies is through the kidney and, hence, Dr. Robert Atkins' use of KetoStixTM to prove the compliance of his patients on the rigorous carbohydrate restriction. This same excretory pathway, however, is utilized by the body in excreting
uric acid. When there is a high level of ketoacid, it's like competition for a revolving door, everything slows down. The result is sometimes a dramatic increase in serum levels of uric acid, which can precipitate either kidney stones or a gouty attack."

Physical Therapy

Physical therapy and/or heat is often given a major role in the treatment or management of arthritis. Certainly it is important to exercise sufficiently to keep the joints working, but a word of caution: In the case of Gouty Arthritis, such physical activity is not only extremely painful, but may also help to rapidly erode joint bearing surfaces by the action of uric acid crystals gouging into the surfaces. If Rheumatoid Arthritis is caused by a genetic susceptibility
to the protein products or toxins of an unknown organism29, then extended exercise and heat will cause that organism to be spread further and faster, probably resulting in what is known as "galloping arthritis1." The Rheumatoid Disease Foundation takes the position that one should first halt the progress of the disease, and then conduct more strenuous exercises.