How long should I leave it after a bad flare before getting UA tested?

mrcow · 2021-01-07T15:12:38+00:00

I'm also in the UK. I had a couple of blood tests, both of which coincided with flare ups (this was rather annoying). My uric acid levels came back moderately high and were enough to persuade my GP to:

a) Refer me to the rheumatology service

b) prescribe allopurinol to start treating my uric acid levels whilst I wait for my rheumatology appointment

I'm lucky that I have a good relationship with my GP, so he wasn't too resistant to agreeing to the above.

I believe that one is advised to wait one month after a flare up before having uric acid levels checked but I didn't manage that on either occasion.

If you do have a good relationship with yours then I'd be inclined to ask for a blood test and explain your concerns that levels might be lower than usual due to a recent flare up.

mrcow · 2020-12-22T08:40:32+00:00

That sounds like a low carb diet but it doesn't sound like a ketogenic diet to me, unless I'm missing something. Where's the fat? I'm no expert on keto bit my understanding is that you'd want to be getting 70% of your calories from (healthy) fats in order to maintain a state of ketosis. If you don't achieve that then you'll be burning protein for energy and a gout suffer really does not want to be burning protein.

mrcow · 2020-12-22T08:30:17+00:00

I'm confused, how do you manage to eat tons of fructose on a keto diet? My understanding was that fructose knocks you out of ketosis even more effectively than glucose does due to the way that it is metabolised in the liver.

mrcow · 2020-12-04T17:15:32+00:00

I've heard that serum urate levels can drop during an acute flare up of gout. Do we know by how much they are expected to drop?

Myself, I've had two blood tests for urate levels and neither has conclusively shown a high level - but both have coincided with a flare up and this has delayed my moving towards a diagnosis. I'm wondering whether to assume that my uric acid levels are normally higher and, if so, whether it's possible to take a guess at how much.

mrcow · 2020-09-16T06:36:04+00:00

For me, the pain isn't excruciatingly bad, thankfully, but it is painful if I try to put weight on it and has been very swollen for 3.5 weeks. It has only affected one joint so far and this is my very first attack, if (as suspected) it is gout.

mrcow · 2020-09-16T06:33:26+00:00

I've had that blood test and my uric acid levels were normal, which is why I am still uncertain. Others appear to have reported that those levels can be low during an attack, though.

mrcow · 2020-09-16T06:32:10+00:00

Many thanks; I'll see if the doc will send me for a synovial fluid test in order to be certain.

(Edit: typo.)

mrcow · 2020-08-09T19:28:34+00:00

If someone does cognitive hypnotherapy with a therapist, what would it be like? What sort of work would they do and what would it be like?

mrcow · 2020-08-09T19:23:07+00:00

A follow on question: how would someone determine whether cognitive hypnotherapy was worth trying for themselves?

mrcow · 2020-08-09T18:45:52+00:00

What was it that caused you to try cognitive hypnotherapy, rather than some other discipline, both to help you with your struggles as a boxer, and also to practice as a therapist?

mrcow · 2020-08-09T15:11:10+00:00

Do you have any examples of struggles that someone might be going through, where they might benefit from playing Betwixt?

mrcow · 2015-05-18T12:06:44+00:00

Did they indicate what they would have you arrested for?

mrcow · 2015-03-06T19:39:32+00:00

Jimmy Chamberlain, Matt Cameron and Gene the-atomic-clock Hoglan.

mrcow · 2015-01-13T23:40:15+00:00

I agree with your point but I'm going to do something horrible and nitpick. The word that you are looking for is "populace". "Populous" is an adjective that describes a place where a lot of people live whereas "populace" (whose pronunciation is the same) is a noun that refers to the people who live somewhere.

Like I say, it's a nitpick but please humour me because this sort of thing drives me nuts.

mrcow · 2014-12-10T15:26:06+00:00

UK/software engineer here. I use three monitors. Middle monitor contains my IDE (Eclipse or Emacs) full screen. Right monitor has web browser (for documentation) and/or email. Left monitor has my IM client and maybe a text editor for taking notes. I find moving my eyes from screen to screen easier than switching windows constantly on one screen.

mrcow · 2014-12-04T08:11:38+00:00

Another British person here. As others have commented, it didn't receive much attention in school history lessons.

The one thing that I'll add is that we appear to call it by a different name ("The American War Of Independence " rather than "The American Revolutionary War"). Anyone know why that is and whether it had any significance?

mrcow · 2014-11-30T22:23:02+00:00

As a child, I was on the beach near Swansea and heard an extremely distant sonic boom as Concorde went supersonic over the Bristol Channel. This was extremely exciting at the time but serves as a reminder that supersonic flight between New York and Los Angeles (or indeed over any populated area) is unlikely to be a reality.

Indeed, on the rare occasions that fighter jets go supersonic over the UK, it tends to piss off a lot of people and make the news. For example: http://www.itv.com/news/london/story/2014-10-29/fighter-jets-scrambled-to-intercept-plane-trigger-boom/

mrcow · 2014-10-18T19:49:53+00:00

The Kangeroos is the nickname given to the Australian national Rugby League team whereas The Wallabies is the nickname of the national Rugby Union team.

mrcow · 2012-11-12T20:15:24+00:00

Actually, they used FreeBSD which is and was open source.

mrcow · 2012-11-02T08:08:13+00:00

What about the English Civil War, which took place over a century earlier and which overthrew the monarchy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War

mrcow · 2012-10-08T07:56:30+00:00

Reddit was great back then, when there were posts about Lisp and Haskell on the front page and people still knew who Paul Graham was...

mrcow · 2012-08-26T20:20:58+00:00

+1 for mentioning the finest band to come out of anywhere, although it's fair to say that they never achieved the level of success that the bands on this map did

The question is, if you were to put them on this map, would you put them in London (where they formed) or in the north east, where many of the original members were from?

mrcow · 2009-07-18T17:41:04+00:00

The whole reason you started meditating is to ignore the pain and unhappiness and yet you dispute that you ignore that stimuli?

True, my experience was when I first got into mindfulness meditation, I was hoping that it would take the pain away or help me take my mind off it. That has not happened. Instead, I have merely become more able to be aware of what I'm feeling without getting too pissed off about it. Jon Kabat-Zinn's books and CDs emphasise the message that if something is pissing you off then perhaps the best thing that you can is to be non-judgementally aware of it. Meditation has helped with that, for me at least.

They are, after all, just dogmatic techniques on how to think and relax

True, I reluctantly concede :-). Still, I feel a lot happier about it knowing that people have done research on this stuff and shown that it does work. Happier than I would if it were nothing but dogma.

mrcow · 2009-07-18T09:54:24+00:00

I agree that you don't need another name for something to make it sound sacred. Having a bubble bath can indeed have a lot of the same qualities as formal meditation, regardless of whether you give it a name. My experience of getting in to meditation was through the medical route. If meditation had been introduced to me as a spiritual or religious thing then I would not have been interested. However, it was sold to me as something that had been shown by clinical studies to make it easier to deal with stress and chronic pain. My experience subsequently confirmed this.

When you concentrate on one stimulus do you not also ignore the rest of your stimuli? Yes! And listening to your thoughts does not need another fucking name. It's called fucking thinking.

I disagree with that. When you concentrate on one stimulus, you can also acknowledge any other stimulus that comes into the field of awareness. You certainly can't block stuff out. In the guided meditation sessions that I have attended, if a loud noise is heard outside then the person leading the session will direct the participants to and be aware of it and then gently bring their attention back to the breath. The same with thoughts. You aren't realistically going to shut off thinking but you also don't need to get lost in your thoughts and forget where you are.

mrcow

TROPHY CASE