Eight million Americans have gout; a painful arthritic condition that usually causes pain in the feet and toes. While the condition is fairly common, there are many, many myths about it. To dispel gout myths, we\u2019re debunking the most common ones.<\/p>\n
A person who is overweight or obese is at a higher risk for gout, but they certainly aren\u2019t the only ones who get it. Gout impacts people of all shapes and sizes.<\/p>\n
Men and women can get this disease, but it usually impacts them at different times in life. “Gout is 10 times more common in men than in women, until women reach menopause. The incidence of new cases of\u00a0gout in men\u00a0and women tends to equal out after age 60 or so,” Herbert Baraf, M.D., clinical professor of medicine at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. tells AARP<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s common for gout attacks to happen in the foot or big toe, but it\u2019s not the only place they happen. Gout occurs when uric acid builds up in the body. The acid turns into crystals that lodge themselves in between joints, which can impact the knees, ankles, feet, and hands.<\/p>\n Some people believe that gout doesn\u2019t have any medical solution, but that\u2019s not true. There are medications that can slow gout and ease flare-ups. Colchicine, for example, is prescribed for acute flare-ups. Benemid can help control uric acid levels and Krystexxa is a new intravenous drug that clears uric acid deposits from joints.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eight million Americans have gout; a painful arthritic condition that usually causes pain in the feet and toes. While the condition is fairly common, there are many, many myths about it. To dispel gout myths, we\u2019re debunking the most common ones. Gout Myths #1: Only large people get gout A person who is overweight or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[711],"tags":[712,1235],"class_list":["post-15173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gout","tag-gout","tag-gout-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Gout Myths #3: Gout only occurs in the big toe<\/h3>\n
Gout Myths #4: There are no medications to treat gout<\/h3>\n