The Cause of Gout Symptoms

Yesterday, we posted on Dr, Donohue’s assertion that diet is less important than ever in the management of gout, owing to the strong medicines available to us today. These medicines include Colchicine, Allopurinol, Indocin, and perhaps soon Febuxostat among others.

Today, we have the counterpoint to that perspective from another health columnist, Dr. W. Gifford Jones of the Canada Free Press. Dr. Jones quotes Thomas Sydenham, the “English Hippocrates”, who remarked that, “The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than 20 asses laden with drugs.” Jones goes on to state that Sydenham died in 1689 of gout.

I have never heard of terminal gout, myself. Perhaps since we are talking about the 1680’s he died of a staph infection when a tophus broke through the skin. Or perhaps his Gout caused him to lose his balance while walking and he fell to his death. A quick search in Wikipedia does not give details of his death.

Dr. Jones quotes Harvard School of Public Health research favoring a return to the purine-free dietary restrictions of days gone by (again confusing the distinction between “seafood” and “shellfish”). Of course, Dr. Jones - a gout sufferer himself - goes on to say that he cannot live without his beloved lobster and shrimp, and will continue to eat them.

Details of the Harvard Gout study were sketchy in this article. It would be interesting to read more on this research.

Read More:
Torture In the Big Toe At 2:AM [Canada Free Press]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 at 10:36 am and is filed under Gout Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.