Imagine this: you wake up one morning and you feel you're going to die because your big toe is just killing you. You're thinking to yourself, "what's going on!" and uncover your foot quickly. You see a huge bump on your toe that's so painful you can't put anything on it - not even your sheets.

Sounds scarry? Let me tell you... it is.

That's what people go through when they have a gout attack.


Before we talk about how to treat it, let's quickly go over what does gout look like. There are fortunately many images you can find by doing a quick search over at Google, but let me explain this as well as I can.

Gout causes enormous swelling in the joints. You can literally see a huge, swollen, red bump around the joint that's infected by it. It usually occurs during your morning hours in the foot area, but it's not uncommon to have gout on your hands, fingers and other joints.

The swollen area is extremely tender and you absolutely can't put any pressure on it at all because it hurts so bad.

Why does gout even happen?
See, everyone has a certain type of acid in their body. It's called uric acid and usually you can't even feel it's there. Unfortunately, sometimes people have problems processing that acid in their body and it starts to build up in the joints. That's how gout gets developed.

How to treat gout?
There are a few things you can do to stop uric acid from building up and thus stop the pain:

1. You need to drink lots of water. Obviously, you want to clear out your system and get rid of all the harmful substances that cause the pain. That's why you should drink at least four glasses of water with each one of your meals.

2. Change your diet. This is also very important. You probably don't know that eating lots of protein will cause the acid we talked about above to build up, and when it does... Just try to limit the amount of protein you take in.

3. Don't drink alcohol. See, alcohol also increases the level of uric acid in your system, so don't drink it too much.

4. Try to lose weight. This might seem a little unrelated, but losing weight if you are overweight helps to regulate your system a little better which will result in you having a more balanced chemistry in your body.

Gout is a pain. Literally. You should do everything you can to not only be able to spot it early, but also to take care of it. Again, my hope is that you take these tips to heart and put them into action.