[Tobra]

Gout is caused by sodium urate crystals. Product of protein metabolism, hence the rich man's disease moniker. Rich guys drink wine, eat steak and lobster, high protein stuff. They are negatively birefringent(appearance changes with polarity of light) and look curiously like ground glass in a microscope. In an acute case, the man(or post-menopausal woman, estrogen is somehow protective) wakes up in the middle of the night with his foot on fire, big toe joint hurts more if you even look at it wrong, let alone touch it. If you do touch it, it is red, warm and plenty sore.

Cherry juice, pomegranate juice will help, you want to be drinking plenty of other fluids(water, not gatorade.) Way I figure it, the juice alters the pH of your urine and helps you excrete it more effectively in yoiur urine. Water helps you make more urine, unless your kidneys are bad. In that case you go into congestive heart failure and feel like you are drowning if you lay flat, sort of like water boarding, only the water is leaking out of you instead of in from the fluid overload.

Tylenol will not do much. Indomethacin(indocin) is probably best NSAID for this. Aspirin at high doses will make it worse, at low doses make it better. Allopurinol for chronic treatment(kinda harsh drug) colchicine for acute attack. Colchicine has an interesting dosing protocol, give until you vomit, then back off a little, seriously, you could look it up. Best way to treat is not to get. Mostly is diet related, stay away from organ meats in particular, drink plenty of water. Some people who have metabolic or renal(kidney) disease are prone to it. For some, it is the initial event on the way to dialysis(not to be melodramatic, this is very rare)

There is also chronic tophaceous gout, which is nasty. Imagine if you were sweating out blobs of toothpaste, vary in size from grain of rice to pit of a cherry. Looks like a little pimple on a cool part of body, toe, ear, even saw it on the tip of a guy's nose once. Like a blister full of uric acid crystals, which is pretty irritating to the tissue, from the looks of it.

That reply was not quick at all.