This particular arthritis type manifests itself through sudden, painful attacks. Gout attacks develop very quickly, in a few hours time, and can last as long as three to four days, if they are untreated. Severe pain, redness, inflammation and swollen joints are the main symptoms of a gout flare, that mostly affects the joint of the big toe. Other joints can be affected by a gout attack as well. Your hand, foot, ankle and knee joints can be affected by these gout flares.

There are some lucky gout patients that only suffer from a gout attack once in their lives. However, for the majority of the gout patients, those flares will return. If you do not treat the gout attacks when they happen, as time passes by, they will become more and more severe and last even longer than the previous gout flares.

Uric acid is highly tied to gout, because the excess of this acid in your blood is actually the cause of a gout. Little crystals form as a result, they collect in the joints and cause pain and inflammation. This is gout at the beginning. The breakdown of chemicals called purines is what uric acid is made from. These chemicals can be found in different foods and alcohol. So if you suffer from gout or if you try to prevent a gout case from happening to you, try to avoid those things as much as possible.

Diagnosing gout is not very complicated. If having any gout signs go see your doctor.He/ she will do a blood test to see what are your uric acid levels. If there is still doubt, some fluid is then taken from your joints and checked for crystals. Then, based on the results, you can be diagnosed with gout or not.

Because nothing is simple in medicine and life, irony strikes in gout case as well. There are people who have risen uric acid levels, but never actually have to deal with gout and there are others that have gout despite the fact that their levels of uric acid are normal.