Are you suffering from terrible joint pain? Would you like to know for certain whether or not you are having a gout attack? Here are 5 common gout symptoms to help you determine if you truly are having an attack.
1. Your pain began in the middle of the night. This arthritic problem often begins at night. When you are sleeping the synovial fluid responsible for cleaning your joints doesn't flow enough to properly clear out the excess debris. This allows uric acid crystals to accumulate causing swelling leading to terrible pain. So ask yourself, did this pain come on suddenly in the middle of the night. If you were not suffering when you went to sleep, but woke up in pain, chances are you have gout.
2. You don't remember injuring your affected joint. One of the problems with a new onset of this condition is thinking you have a sprained foot or ankle versus having gout. The most common place for pain is in the big toe. However, this is not always the case. Often attacks occur in the ankle and many have felt they sprained their ankle. After a couple weeks of getting worse and not better many realize they don't remember injuring their ankle. So ask yourself if you remember injuring your ankle or foot. If the answer is no, you possibly have gout.
3. Your pain is getting worse. As mentioned in the last point, if your pain has not subsided over a few days, but is actually getting worse with increased swelling and redness, you could possibly have gout. When you suffer an injury the swelling will usually subside after a few days whereas gouty arthritis will continue to increase in intensity.
4. Your pain has spread to other joints. Sometimes gout will jump from one joint to another. You can have pain in your foot today and have it spread to your knees, elbow, wrists, and fingers. Sometimes it can feel like you have tendonitis, but in reality, it is gout.
5. Even the slightest pressure causes intense pain. For regular patients with this disease, it has been noted that even the slightest pressure from even a bed sheet can cause immense pain.
If you have these symptoms, what can you do?
Get a blood test to determine if your symptoms point to having gouty arthritis. Other arthritic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or pseudo gout can have similar symptoms. Blood tests can determine your base uric acid levels and enable a physician to properly diagnose you. Regardless of which disease you have, though, the treatments are often similar.
Tom Frascone
Author Bio
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