Excessive protein intake increases uric acid which is the cause of gout; the pain comes on suddenly and increases rapidly; can make the patient disabled…
Gout is a common form of arthritis. Patients often suffer from sudden and severe pain in the joints of the toes, fingers, knees, accompanied by red swelling, even unable to walk due to the pain. Gout is known to be microcrystals characterized by recurrent episodes of arthritis.
The cause to the illness
According to the excellent doctor Assoc. Dr. Dr. Dang Hong Hoa – Head of the Department of Musculoskeletal – Tam Anh General Hospital, Hanoi, there are 3 main groups of causes of gout:
Firstly, because the patient enters too much protein into the body, it increases metabolism, increases uric acid, resulting in increased deposition of monosodium urate crystals in the joints, the parts around the joints, in some organ tissues. for example in the kidney or heart.
Second, the body’s excretion is common in people with medical problems such as people with high blood pressure, people with metabolic diseases, or people with chronic diseases such as people taking drugs for treatment such as tuberculosis, cancer or cancer. blood diseases, other arthritis… can cause increased uric acid. In particular, patients with high blood pressure are also one of the causes of increased uric acid.
Third, the case of metabolic disorders due to the lack of some special enzymes in the metabolism of uric acid in the body (inherited).
Recognizing symptoms
Often gout occurs in the first acute gout attacks, appearing suddenly, related to activities, eating as after a high-protein meal can cause sudden pain and swelling in the ankle joints, toe joints. A small number of sudden painful swelling in the knee joint, mostly from the knee down, especially in the ankle and toe joints.
Swelling and pain of acute gout develop very quickly, or appear at night because at night the temperature drops, blood circulation in the body slows down. The area in the ankles, toes (the temperature is lower than other areas of the body) is a favorable factor for monosodium urate crystals in the blood to circulate and to be deposited in those joint areas, causing inflammation.
The pain usually comes on suddenly and peaks very quickly. However, gout is characterized by a rapid increase in pain in the first few days and a rapid decrease in taking medication. This period of pain relief can even take a long time before it comes back. Subsequent relapses continued to pile up, until the relapse could not be separated, and the pain was constant. This is a chronic gout stage and people with this chronic gout treatment are quite persistent, tiring.
Conspicuous manifestations of gout: swollen, painful joints look very large, hot, red, painful, very hot to the touch, the skin on the red joints turns purple red because the vessels have been dilated, monosodium urate crystals accumulate concentrated, forming a purple-red skin surface.
Consequence
Gout is a well-managed disease. However, the majority of the results failed. The pain of progressive gout is so acute, so intense that you need immediate treatment. But after treatment returns to stability, some people continue to have factors that make gout increase such as eating too much protein, drinking alcohol, using tobacco… All these factors make gout worse. Gout is on the rise.
Hong Hoa said, if you can manage gout pain, then continue to manage so that the disease does not recur or the level of recurrence is small. Because gout not only deposited monosodium urate crystals in joints and soft tissues around joints, but also deposited in tissues such as skin, kidneys, heart… The danger is that these crystals are also deposited in tissues such as skin; kidney causes hypertension, kidney failure; The heart causes damage to the autonomic nerve networks in the heart, causing arrhythmias, atrial fibrillation, blockage of blood vessels leading to heart failure. It even causes strokes in the heart such as myocardial infarction, stroke in the cerebral blood vessels causing hemiplegia. Gout not only makes patients disabled but also life-threatening.
Thu Ky
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