@dadcue my confusion was not about gout but about something you wrote. I was unsure if you had pseudo, gout or gout or both.
You are very lucky that you were diagnosed with inflammatory arthritis about the time that I should’ve been also diagnosed. However, I wasn’t getting regular medical attention in my 30s. It was more about general medical needs being a mom and for my family. But you are also unlucky because they put you on the prednisone which was an acceptable way to deal with the inflammation at that point in time. At the end of my 30s I was receiving periodic injections of steroids for my inflammatory pain with no attention given to what was the source. In my 40s it was about sending me to physical therapy and then by my 50s I was having joint replacements. There was never any attempt made to organize everything under one umbrella. When I looked back, it’s all very clear. Both sides of my family had inflammatory arthritis. But they made do. I am lucky that I observed, and kept pushing to eventually get myself into a place where I am in better shape at 69 than I was at 39.
I believe in food as medicine and I’ve witnessed how clearly that works over the years. My dad had gout and took no gout medicine until his 70s because he did not eat sugar, and he moved his body to an alkaline state by putting lemon in his water. It was that simple he a lot of fruits and vegetables things that include protective agents against gout or pseudo gout. My aunt on the other hand ate a miserable diet, and she suffered every day of her life as she aged. She refused to be disciplined. She refused to control her sugar and acknowledge what was causing her inflammatory condition. Looking back I feel really bad that nobody could help her get to the right doctor and her family wouldn’t recognize the inflammatory gout that made her miserable and made her a miserable person.
Yes, my medical history is very complicated too, and I think it’s because I walked around with the consequences of an inflammatory body for 30 years untreated at its source. I think that most women who suffer with things like fibromyalgia are not getting treated for an inflammatory condition, and the catchall term is fibromyalgia. It makes people feel better that they can have a diagnosis, even if it works against them in solving what’s at the source of the problem. It’s the same for the term arthritis. Inflammation destroys our body in a way that is most significant and that we most ignore. Instead of treating opioids like it’s the devil people should look at things like their sugar intake. They should look at things like the acidic state they throw their bodies into. They should not accept the “masks” that the medical industry gives them for reducing inflammation, but they should look at the cause more closely so that they don’t have negative outcomes from the medicines themselves. It’s all related by inflammation. What seems complicated is not so complicated when we reduce the inflammation in our bodies. All of a sudden my chronic glaucoma, high eye pressure went to normal when the gouty arthritis was controlled by normalizing my uric acid level. My interstitial cystitis was gone when my uric acid level was normalized seemingly unrelated things were normalized and healthy again when the inflammation at a core level was eliminated.