600,000 French people suffer from gout, a disease that is not particularly glamorous, and which affects only fat people. Badly treated, it remains a very real threat, especially for the heart.
It is the sly return of an illness that we thought had been forgotten. One of the best specialists in the world is French. Professor Thomas Bardin, head of the rheumatology department at Lariboisière hospital in Paris, wants to be alarmist. According to him, of course, gout is treated well since we have several drugs that decrease uric acid in the blood. It is curable and should only be a bad memory. But it has not disappeared, on the contrary, it is the same recipe! Because our new eating habits make it more frequent.
A cardiovascular risk
Gout becomes a disease all the more serious as it promotes high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. According to Professor Bardin, it “poses a real public health problem which is integrated into the diseases linked to a bad diet in the same way as obesity and diabetes”. The “queen of diseases” and the “evil of kings”! Nicknames given at the time when the people were hungry and when only the rich and the powerful could supposedly fall victim to them. Gout has kept this outdated image of a disease caused by good food. The Christmas holidays have undoubtedly reminded a good number of mature, somewhat enveloped men of this sad truth, but if it is aggravated by a bad diet, it actually affects all social categories.
A deposit of uric acid
Gout strikes when you have had an excess of uric acid in the blood for a long time and this excess of uric acid will cause deposits in the various tissues of the body. Crystals then form in the main organs, and in particular the joints. If crystals form in the joints, they are the cause of extremely painful crises: the pain is sudden and intolerable. The toe, which becomes red, swollen, untouchable, is the main victim. For some reason that science has still not fully explained (lower temperature in the extremities?), Even if the ankles, fingers or knees can be affected, it is mainly the base of the big toe that is the preferred site. painful attacks in humans. In the past, when you did not have treatment, you had to take your pain patiently, wait for the crisis to end, which was always the case. But the repetition of these crises ended, after a few years, in the destruction of the joints.
Failure to degrade or eliminate
This uric acid comes from the breakdown of the noblest part of our body, DNA. When a cell dies, the nucleus that contains our genetic barcode, made up of DNA, is eliminated as uric acid. The number of cells that die each day is important – just for the brain, we lose 70 million neurons per year! -, the production of uric acid is therefore not negligible. Everyone should suffer from gout, but luckily in healthy people the kidney is on top of things and emits this acid perfectly in the urine. However, a diet rich in calories, beer, sugary sodas, cold meats and offal, seafood, an excess of appetizers or digestives, and uric acid will accumulate in the blood and then crystallize in the joints. .
An old story that continues
Gout has been known since the Middle Ages but it has only recently been known that, to develop it, it is not enough to eat too much, but that it is possible to inherit it: it is the discovery of the mutation of a gene involved in the elimination of uric acid in the urine which can be passed from parents to children. Gout is predominantly a family disease and not just a deserved disease. It mainly affects men, because women are partially protected before menopause by their hormones, and especially middle-aged men, because it takes several decades of excess uric acid in the blood for deposits and crystals are formed.
We can treat gout
Uric acid can be lowered in the blood and, below a certain threshold, excess uric acid in the tissues will pass back into the blood, to be broken down and eliminated there. New drugs used in good doses thus know perfectly well how to eliminate the excessive stocks of gout patients. But according to Thomas Bardin, the patient, like his doctor, uses too low doses and is too often satisfied with the disappearance of the symptoms, then leaving the excess uric acid to live his life in peace and cause, in addition to the new painful attacks, problems in other organs and in particular heart complications. According to an American study, published in 2008, in 9,105 men followed for 17 years in a row, the presence of gout increases myocardial infarction mortality by 35% and increases cardiovascular mortality by 21% …
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