Health

Red Red Wine

by LotusFlower | January 16, 2009 at 08:37 am

749 views | 24 Recommendations | 8 comments

A colleague returns to work after Christmas limping.

I ask if he's dropped a present on his foot or injured himself playing
tennis on his son's Wii but no:

"Gout! Damn Gout!" he snarls.

My friend though not in the first flush of youth is not yet ready for
retirement and gout is an illness that I somehow associate with times
gone by, comedy, old men and port.

My lack of serious concern prompts him to take off his black sock the
left one stitched through in yellow with 'Monday' to reveal a swollen and sore
looking stump of a digit.

I begin to feel a little more sympathy for him as he looks up and
vows to cut back on the old red wine in the hope of staving off
another painful and really quite unfunny attack of 'Gout! Damn gout!'

winter wind
the joint in dad's big toe
predicts rain

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Gout is a very painful condition and the below links offer an explanation of the condition and the symptoms associated with it:

Wikipedia Gout NHS Gout Patient UK Gout ARC Gout

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The boxer Alex Ramos reveals that he and many retired boxers suffer from gout.

Also, and people will laugh, a lot of fighters suffer from some kind of gout. I have three fighters right now, that can't walk because they have gout, Alex being one of them. Yesterday I got a call from a guy that was in so much pain, and I told his wife to go buy a basket of cherries, because cherries will cure gout. I'll tell you what, we know how to get the job done. A box of cherries cost $1.29, and you know what, we do what we've got to do and I know how painful it is to have gout. Alex had a bout where he literally had to crawl around his apartment and he has gone through periods this year where he could not walk.

Johnny Vegas the UK comedian and actor has tried to lose weight and drink less to avoid the bouts of gout he's been getting and to live to see his son grow up.

• Johnny Vegas appeared to have made a career out of his full figure, even starring in his own Channel 4 quiz show entitled 18 Stone of Idiot. For this northern comic, his reason to slim down was to be around longer for his son, Michael. His regular doses of gout also influenced his change of habit, though he has said he feels some sense of guilt over the fact that the main pie producer in his hometown of St Helen's has since closed three of its shops.

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Roy C

at 13:13 on January 16th, 2009

Allopurinol suppresses the conversion of the precursor of uric acid to uric acid, too much of which can precipitate out in the blood as crystals, causing great pain.

Allopurinol is a great drug which sometimes gets overlooked. My father-in-law had gout and I had to get him to ask his doctor for it, after which he never had an attack of gout again for more than a decade.

LotusFlower

at 13:28 on January 16th, 2009

Thanks Roy - I wonder what it is in cherries that helps with the pain of gout too?

joka0318

at 15:23 on January 16th, 2009

Port wine vintage - Sandeman

Don't drink too much !

joka0318 has contributed a photo to this story.

LotusFlower

at 16:15 on January 16th, 2009

thanks for the photo - yes sandeman will do it! Was it Sandeman that Orson Welles endorsed?

Amy Judd

at 15:39 on January 16th, 2009

Ewww - so you can get gout from drinking too much??

LotusFlower

at 16:20 on January 16th, 2009

Red wine apparently can for some (especially if its heavy like port) contribute to the build up of uric acid and crystals in the joints... just finished a bottle of cabernet sauvignon,,, checking the old toes...