Two-step Treatment Plan For Gout

Getting Past Gout Pain to Treat the Root Cause

If you have gout, saying that it can be extremely painful is quite the understatement. In some people, the pain is comparable with the pain of childbirth and bone fractures. Others may experience less severe attacks. In either case, when you're in the middle of a gout attack, stopping the pain is probably all you can think about. But there are actually 2 steps to effective gout treatment: treating the symptoms (the pain and inflammation of a gout attack) and treating the root cause (high uric acid). Both are important parts of your gout management plan.

Step 1: Treating the Symptoms

The first step to treatment is immediate pain relief for a gout attack. Medications that help with the pain and swelling of a gout attack include common pain relievers and anti-inflammatories, such as:

• NSAIDs (Examples: indomethacin and naproxen)
• Colchicine
• Steroids (Example: prednisone)

If you're in the middle of a gout attack, you may want to contact your healthcare professional to discuss pain-management options. He or she can prescribe medicines to help reduce gout pain and swelling and manage the attack, but some of them work best when they're taken at the beginning of the attack. Here are a few tips for coping while you wait for your medication to work:

• Follow instructions. If your healthcare professional gives you a prescription (or recommends a nonprescription) medication for gout pain and/or inflammation, take it exactly as directed.
• Give your healthcare professional the whole story. Make sure your healthcare professional knows about all the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. This information may be very important to your treatment.
• Rest is important. Your healthcare professional may recommend bed rest during your flare and for a day afterward. Too much activity too soon may make another flare more likely.

This immediate pain management is an important part of treatment, but it does not address the root cause of gout.

Step 2: The Root Cause: Treating High Uric Acid

Gout pain relief is important, but to manage the condition over time, you'll need a treatment that lowers your uric acid to a healthy range. Keeping your uric acid level low (less than 6 mg/dL) is the goal for long-term management of gout. Over time, this can help control your gout symptoms. Learn about long-term treatment