More young adults suffering with gout
Genetics, high-fat and sugary diets blamed for the crippling condition
Harry Tyndall assumed he’d fractured a bone when he stepped out of bed one morning and couldn’t walk. Hobbling to a physiotherapist near his home in London, England, the 28-year-old turned out to be wrong. After one look, the clinician told him he had gout — a severe form of inflammatory arthritis, which causes limbs to swell.
The prospect of not being able to walk long distances was terrifying.
“Not for one second did I ever think I had gout because I knew it was for people double my age.”
Mention gout to most people and their minds will jump to a few well-worn stereotypes: gluttonous medieval kings who have indulged in too much port or florid golf club managers with a weakness for rare steaks.
Rarely do we imagine healthconscious millennials who are abstaining from meat and alcohol at higher rates than any generation before them.
But gout may be on the rise among this very group, as a growing consumption of sugar and fatty foods leaves them vulnerable to the condition, which can cause immensely painful attacks of arthritis.
Gout diagnoses rose by 64 per cent between 1997 and 2012, with one in 40 people now suffering from the condition. Although most patients are still over 60, appointments for those in their 20s and 30s complaining of gout symptoms have increased by 30 per cent since 2012.
Triggered by a buildup of uric acid in the blood, which goes on to crystallize in bone joints, gout usually affects the big toe, leading to the enormous swelling that plagues many sufferers.
The worsening obesity epidemic is believed to be at the heart of the issue, says Dr. Alan Silman, medical director of Arthritis Research UK.
Dr. Silman points particular blame at fizzy drinks, and there is almost certainly a genetic factor as well, with around one in 10 patients inheriting the condition from their parents.
However, experts don’t agree on how much is due to genetics and how much to lifestyle.
An attack of gout, Silman says, is “probably the most painful form of severe arthritis there is.” Many of his patients say their toe becomes so tender they can’t sleep under a bedsheet.
It was the pain that Tyndall remembers most vividly. The big toes in both his feet swelled up enormously. He remembers being “on his hands and knees” in agony. But what Tyndall has found even more difficult is the total change in diet he’s been forced to undertake.
“This year in particular has been quite frustrating,” he says. “I’ve had gout three or four times, and I don’t really know what from. So for the last four or five weeks I’ve actually cut out most dairy.”
He says he hasn’t touched red meat or red wine for two-and-ahalf years — though concedes that a sweet tooth used to see him drink whole tubs of ice-cream after melting them in the microwave.
Tyndall’s diet transformation did give him one added benefit, though — an idea for his next business venture. Unable to have any of his beloved dairy or chocolate, he bought pot after pot of hummus, and eventually left his job to launch a range of sweet varieties of the dip.
His work colleagues began to call him Henry VIII when they found out about his gout diagnosis, a nickname shared by his girlfriend’s family, who warned her not to “lose her head over him.”
It’s this embarrassment that can be difficult to overcome for many sufferers, according to Lynsey Conway, of the UK Gout Society.
“People laugh because they think it’s funny, but it’s actually excruciatingly painful,” she says.
Tyndall is now being treated, and his condition is improving. He was able to walk up the aisle at his wedding last year, and his wife, Samantha, supports his effort to fend off gout by adopting his diet restrictions whenever they eat together in restaurants — no to steak, yes to vegan pasta.
Tyndall now wants to warn more people — particularly those his own age — about the dangers of gout, which he is frustrated remain poorly understood. “I think young people just don’t really understand or appreciate what we’re putting into our bodies,” he says.
I’ve had gout three or four times, and I don’t really know what from ... I’ve actually cut out most dairy.