Symptoms of Gout

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The condition known as gout will normally take several years to form before a person starts to suffer from it. This is because the uric acid crystals need time to build up in a person’s joints and the tissue surrounding it before gout symptoms and signs begin to show.

The most common types of symptoms that a person will suffer from when they have gout are as follows:-

1. The most common form of gout starts as what is known as podagra usually. This refers to pain in the big toe joint when it is inflamed from the build up of uric acid.

2. No one who hasn’t had a gout attack start at bedtime can believe how much pain can come just from the brushing of your partners foot against the infected joint, normally your big toe.

3. If your toe joint feels like it is on fire and that pain goes on for several hours then the chances are you have gout. The pain should start to disperse over the following 2 days although it can take as long as a week to go totally.

4. After your attack of gout has started to subside you may find that the skin around the inflamed joint will feel itchy and it may even begin to peel.

The above are just some of the symptoms that people with gout may have. Not everyone who suffers with the above will have gout and not every gout sufferer will suffer with all (or any) of these symptoms.

While it is usually your big toe joint that suffers the effects of gout , which of course makes walking very painful, you can also get it in any joint in your body. This includes your fingers, elbows, ankles and even your wrists.

In a large number of cases a person often suffers from gout symptoms following an illness or after undergoing surgery and these attacks although painful are short lived. However for those who suffer from chronic gout the attacks are far less painful and in some cases may be diagnosed incorrectly. In some cases especially in older people the gout can actually be confused as being some form or arthritis instead. In fact a chronic gout sufferer is unlikely to suffer from the symptoms very closely associated with acute gout.

It is important however that should a person start to suffer from any of the gout symptoms we have mentioned above they should seek medical advice as soon as possible. Although the pain caused by an attack normally relieves itself a few days after the attack taking the right kind of medication can help to prevent the chance of such attacks occurring again.