Some common symptoms include swelling, inflammation, redness and pain. The most common joint for gout is the big toe though it can affect any other joints. When treating gout methods involve treating the symptoms as well as the actually cause.

Ignoring gout can have some serious implications as it can lead to kidney and joint damage. Goat occurs because of an increase in uric acid in the blood stream. The kidneys usually remove uric acid from the blood so that it is excreted during urination. However for some reason, whether your kidneys are not working properly or you just have a high production rate of uric acid, gout will occur.

The vast majority of men over age 40 are affected by gout. Gout affects men much more then women.

Gout can come about quickly, within 12 to 24 hours of raised uric acid levels in the blood. But it can take weeks to go away. Symptoms associated with gout include skin looking red or shiny, the joint feeling hot, swelling of the joint, tenderness in the joint and sever pain in the joint.

Some other more minor symptoms include a slight fever, nausea and loss of appetite.

The fastest ways to relieve your gout symptoms are to treat them immediately. The longer the gout is left untreated the longer it may remain. Some common treatments include drinking copious amounts of water to dilute the uric acid in the blood, taking ibuprofen to treat the pain, and taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, also known as NSAIDs.

If you take pain killers it is important to stay away from aspirin as this does not help gout but will increase the levels of uric acid in the blood.

The best treatment foe gout is to prevent it. This can be done by using medication that causes the kidneys to remove more uric acid from the blood or reduce your body's production of uric acid.

A natural remedy, without medication, is to monitor your diet and avoid specific foods. Certain foods contain high levels of purines. Purines are broken down in the body and become uric acid.

In order to properly diagnosis gout your doctor may need to perform certain tests including a full medical history, joint fluid test and blood test.

The one test that can completely confirm gout is the joint fluid test. Though this will require some anesthesia and a long needle.