Gout Is Shite

It really is.

People think it’s caused by high living, rich food and drinking port. People made Henry the 8th jokes. It’s debilitating, depressing and it hurts like a mother fucker.

There’s lots of information out there about the causes of gout and cures for it. Lots of the information is contradictory, lots is tied to health fads and people pushing their own supplements. Even reputable sources seem to contradict themselves at times. People’s experiences differ greatly.

What is Gout Is Shit (dot) Com?

Eventually I hope to turn this site into a crowd sourced data set of what seems to make people’s gout worse and what seems to help. It’ll take me time to build it, and longer to gather data, and who knows it might end up that the data is as confusing as all the existing information, so in the meantime, I’m throwing this site up to remind you that you’re not alone.

Lots of people get gout. Sometimes it’s a one off flair up. Sometimes it’s chronic. Sometimes your joints are a bit achy. Sometimes it looks like somebody took a blowtorch to your toe.

So is there anything practical here yet?

Not really. Here are some links and information from personal experience that might be helpful

• The UK Gout Society has this handy PDF which seems to give some reasonable advice about what gout is and how it is affected by your diet
• The NHS has advice about when to seek help. Septic arthritis is a rare but serious complication of gout and is pretty scary.
• Some people think cherry juice and especially tart cherry can help settle a gout flair up. I’ve had some relief in the past, though I’ve also been taking ibuprofen and cutting my diet back to essentials at the same time, so it’s difficult to say what had the most effect.
• Cooling the affected joint with ice gave me some relief but was in itself painful eventually.

Who are you and why are you building Gout Is Shit?

I’m Oli. I’m a 40 year old white guy in the UK, I work in IT. For the last ten years I’ve had sporadic flair-ups of gout, mostly in my big toes. I got sick of the jokes about high living, port quaffing, singing of “I’m Henry The 8th I am” and other nonsense. Gout is pretty common, but reading online about it and asking my doctor I got frustrated at the diversity of “the facts”.

The only thing I can do in life well is build crappy websites, so that’s where I’ve started.