The 4 Main Symptoms of Gout

A gout attack can come on suddenly and can often make you wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling that your big toe is on fire. The affected joint is hot, swollen and very sensitive to the weight of the sheet may seem intolerable. Fortunately, gout is treatable and there are ways to reduce your risk of recurrence.

Main Symptoms of Gout:  Signs and symptoms of Gout almost always occur suddenly, often at night with and without warning. Some of them are:

• Severe joint pain: Gout usually affects the big toe joint, but it can occur in the feet, ankles, knees, hands, and wrists. It is likely to be the most severe pain in the first four to twelve hours after it has started.
• Persistent Discomfort: After the most intense pain subsides, you may have some joint discomfort remains, which can last for a few days or weeks. It is likely that new attacks last longer and affect more joints .
• Swelling and Redness: Affected joints swell, become tender, heated and blush.
• Limited range of motion: It can decrease joint mobility as the fall progresses.

Gout occurs when urate crystals build up in a cluster, causing pain and swelling in a gout  attack . Urate crystals can form if you have high levels of uric acid in your blood. The body produces uric acid when purines, which are substances that are naturally present in the body and in certain foods, such as meats, offal and seafood break down.

There are other foods that cause high levels of uric acid, such as alcoholic beverages, especially beer, and drinks sweetened with fruit sugar (fructose). Normally, uric acid dissolves in the blood and passes through the kidneys in the urine. But sometimes the body produces too much uric acid or the kidneys excrete too little. When this happens, uric acid builds up and forms needle-like urate crystals in a joint or surrounding tissue, and this causes pain , swelling, and inflammation .