Pseudogout (CPDD)

[davelinks]

Hi,

My wife has recently been diagnosed with the above from an x-ray on both knees which found calcium crystals in one knee. So, she gets flare-ups of pain there, which is helped by painkillers, icepack and cream. She hopes to get back to her excercise and running, so, does anyone else have this ailment? and can offer any further advice to help this condition?

Thanks, David

[Hidden]

I have gout and have been advised to stay off red meats. Cherry juice is supposed to be helpful and alloplurinol helps prevent attacks. Good luck.

[andyswarbs]

Gout is an auto-immune illness and in my opinion all auto-immune illnesses are caused by dietary choices. The most famous person I heard with gout is Henry VIII as portrayed on film by Keith Mitchell back in 1962. As a king, his diet would have been extremely rich.

Research the food you eat and eliminate to see what helps is your starting point. My experience is that eliminating dairy would be a great place to start. Eliminating dairy is not easy since milk and cheese are in so mamy products. The simple answer is to remove refined foods from your shopping list, and avoid those cakes.

This is just a starting point. If you want the gout to go away permanently this is your answer.

[katieoxo60]

Hi there, if your wife has crystals in the joint then she needs tablets to dissolve the crystals. Other dietary considerations help to prevent crystals forming, like cherry juice and avoiding purin high foods, this helps to reduce the uric acid in the blood to prevent crystals forming. Recently they are recommending weight loss however another research study says there is no evidence to suggest losing weight helps in gout but dietary changes do and crash diets make it worse. Uric acid levels should be monitored carefully and if high treated, but in England this is not always done and gout is often treated as a joke illness when infact raised uric acid can cause other illness just like raised sugar, or cholestral. Many blood pressure drugs can raise uric acid causing bouts of gout. These are facts I have researched, as I come from a family of gout sufferers and have symptoms myself. I wish your wife and yourself good luck in resolving her joint issues.

[davelinks]

Thanks for all the replies, but as in the word pseudo it is not actually gout as it's known in the common form but just mimics the symptoms, and has nothing to do with diet, CPDD (Calcium Pyrophosphate Deposition Disease) can occur in people that have arthritis, the calcium crystals form in the joint fluid..

[Gatun]

Spot on. There's no cure for pseudogout and the disease has nothing to do with gout other than the pain in joints, so changing what you eat has nothing to do with this disease. I went from "please cut off my leg" to only having a little pain in the mornings when I wake up. Most often the pain goes away after getting up and walking around a little. I drink loads of iced green tea combined with tart berry juices of all kinds, not that this helps the pseudogout but the only thing I'm doing differently. I also laugh and curse at my leg a lot which seems to help, and have a new name for the disease but can't write it here!