From a PR email:
Forget port-swilling Victorians: 1 in 40 Brits have gout and cases in young adults have increased 30%
If you thought gout was an outdated condition affecting portly, red-faced Victorians, think again.
Sigh. It was Georgians – in those cartoons etc – who were always portrayed with gout. Not Victorians.
I’ve heard one story that Pitt would down 6 bottles – half a case – after dinner. Which seems excessive even for that time period.
Whatevs. I assume the ‘young adult’ cases is a rise from 100 to 130 or similar.
I know 3 people who suffer from gout. All are over 70 and only one is a toper.
The ever-worthless British Establishment has decided that drinking and diet is their best wheeze for tormenting the proles, in the name of the Sainted NHS of course, so we are afflicted with cunts like Henry Dimbleby.
I started having gout flare-ups in my early forties. A little less self-indulgence and little more self-discipline and they soon stopped.
One of the advantages of having older siblings is that you can see in advance what ailments advancing age is likely to bring you. My brother is 10 years older than me, military chap, lifelong carnivore and heavy drinker. He got gout. I got it at the same age, although I’m vegan and gave up drinking in the 1990s. The same with other ailments. Mostly genetic, I think, rather than lifestyle.
Tbf I had gout in my mid 20s when I was drinking 20 pints a day. It didn’t need a charity or tax payer funded health lobbies to make me aware of the cause.
“I’ve heard one story that Pitt would down 6 bottles – half a case – after dinner. Which seems excessive even for that time period.”
I’ve got a book on the history of drinking, appropriately called Drink: a Social History by Andrew Barr (out of print) which said that people were categorised as “four bottle men” or the like depending on their capacity. It’s not quite as implausible as it seems because a) dinner tended go on for many hours (not a lot else to do), and b) port then wasn’t as fortified as it is now.
Bottles were smaller too I think. Imperial pint rather than 75cl.
Good grief Arthur, you may have solved a mystery in the life of Grist!
52 years ago I joined a firm of accountants straight from school. Coming from a family of non-drinkers, the style of work rather bewildered me. Accountancy, tax and auditing were squeezed into the gaps between bouts of serious drinking. I remember the leader of my first audit job solemnly going off for a “late breakfast” and coming back bumping into desks and falling over chairs. The firm? Andrew W. Barr & Co of 22 Upper Brook Street…
It’s yet another Number-by-Proxy. Incidence of gout in young adults is up; therefore your brain immediately assumes young people are drinking too much.
But young people are actually drinking less these days! (£50k of student debt is enough to put you off your drink.)
What has changed in the young then? Their ethnic makeup, that’s what. Along with the rapists, it turns out we’ve also imported a population more prone to gout. Immigration, the gift that keeps on giving.
Andrew
Are you arguing that the Muzzies haven’t had those susceptible to booze weeded out by the demon drink, so when they come to blessed Britain the grog begins to give them the chop??
I’ve narrowed it down to Ultra-Processed Food, climate change or cousin marrriage.
I used to get gout… We tracked the cause down to “oily fish” – I used really to enjoy mackerel, pilchards and the like and probably ate too much of them, especially after my heart-attack when such items were recommended for the diet. Largely cutting them out of my diet removed the gout “flare-ups”. I also “quite like a drink” but in my case my liver might get a bit of a bashing but my knees and toes seem OK.
Off topic but over in Spudland, the Sage of Ely is claiming that he “can think of no one else so actively engaged in the pursuit of the destruction of liberal democracy in this country” than the current Conservative party.
A poster calling himself (or herself – for of course I have no idea who the poster is) Samuel Paty begs to differ.
Monsieur Paty was of course the name of the French teacher beheaded by a liberal, democratic, Muslim for showing a cartoon.
@Andrew M
Likewise the fall in the take up of the measles vaccine among children. Total co-incidence that this take up seems lowest in the Midlands and London.
@Grist
Likewise my time in HMIT (as was) back in the 1990s. Friday all the tax inspectors in Winchester went down the King Alfred for lunch and only came back to the office to collect their coats before going home. The wife of the District Inspector once phoned the pub rather than the office to speak to him because she knew that’s where he’d be.
Boganboy
A few months ago a few of the guests at the local barracks, fresh off the boat, were in Tescos.
These lads bought a half bottle of vodka a regular half litre of Fanta and a jar of pickled gherkins.
Top jollies in the barracks tonight ! I thought.
I suspect gout is much more prevalent in heavy drinkers, regardless of what else you eat.
Ethanol requires breakdown by the liver. If the liver is busy breaking down lots of ethanol, it’s not breaking down other things. Which pile up as a result.
If you’re a heavy drinker and also eat a lot of meat, and get gout, I would cut back on the booze before cutting back on the meat.
Learned four years back gout can result from a heavy blow to a major joint. Happened to me after a bad fall that imapcted a hip. And I am a non-drinker. Have been for nearly five decades.
M: “Gout” as a random form of arthritic ailment , can be anything.. And caused by anything… as several comments here show..
It’s the “medical” ( 18th/19thC style) term for joint inflammation. Nowadays we tend to be a tad more specific. As to cause *and* effect.
Using the term in modern context is as useful as …. well… Humour Theory or … gods past, present, and future forbid… Homeopathy.
And yes… You can get “gout” from drinking Port, and from Cognac ( tad more expensive though..), or any alcohol that has a lot of tannins and is drunk in excess..
You can get the same effect of drinking good ol’ British tea…
Guess where those tannins form (micro)crystals when the body hasn’t enough fluids to flush them out…..
* goes into the Dunce Corner for not checking closing tags* ….
When I was about 40 I started getting gout and the doctor prescribed Naproxyn to take as needed. That worked until about 10 years ago when I got an attack so bad I was using a stick for 2 weeks.
After a blood test the doctor prescribed anti uric acid tablets “for life”. That was the final spur, 15kg lighter and regularly hydrating I came off the tablets and haven’t had any problems unless I hit the red wine and forget to stay hydrated.
As I’ve pointed out before, although gout can be induced by excessive consumption of ‘rich’ foods and/or alcohol, very few of us have the lifestyle of a wealthy Georgian gentleman, for whom a bottle or two of port with a six course dinner might be considered a normal daily event. Many cases are the result of an inherited mutation that interferes with the body’s ability to eliminate uric acid and urates from the blood. It’s possible to control it with dietary changes, but you’re likely to be left with elevated urate levels which can still have harmful effects, even if they don’t manifest as gout. The standard prophylactic is allopurinol, which is considered extremely safe, as millions have been taking it for decades (including me 🙂 )
Chris Miller said:
“The standard prophylactic is allopurinol, which is considered extremely safe, as millions have been taking it for decades (including me )”
Yes, I found it works really well, once you get the dose right.
Curing it by diet was too complicated. It wasn’t just booze; one of the worst attacks I got was when I’d temporarily cut out booze, and was caused by anchovies, which the dear NHS had recommended I eat for other health reasons but which, I later discovered, are dreadful for gout (which they also knew I had, but didn’t join up or read the notes).
Grikath said:
“You can get “gout” from drinking Port, and from Cognac ( tad more expensive though..), or any alcohol that has a lot of tannins and is drunk in excess..”
I thought it was the other way around – that tannins can reduce gout. Certainly for me it was beer that often caused it; switching to heavy, high-tannin red wines greatly reduced attacks.
This scientific paper says “tannins … show the potential of anti-gout effects” and “in animal studies, … tannins show … reduction of uric acid generation”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24791587/
Data point here:
I’ve suffered from gout for at least a decade, and I am as light a drinker as you could imagine, the very occasional glass of wine, and a half a cider at a party (and I don’t get many party invitations).
Allopurinol mostly does the trick of prevention, but when I get an attack, it lingers long.
In my early 50s I had gout in the big toe that I almost broke when I was 15, so the damaged joint = gout proposal looks plausable. My doctor was perplexed as there was nothing in my diet or lifestyle that looked a likely trigger. A course of whatever uriac acid crystal breakdown medicine fixed it.
I think the story was that Pitt the Younger *and friends* would get through 6 bottles of port over a long luncheon or dinner. No matter how strong a head he had for drink, or whether the Port was unfortified (so normal wine strength of 10-12% alcohol), I find it implausible that he could regularly drink a GALLON of port at one meal. We only have one gallon of blood in our bodies so that (when processed by the stomach before extraction by the kidneys) that would double the flow of liquid through the veins and after extraction by the kidneys expand the bladder to six times its normal size.
Pitt drank far more than Churchill but six bottles? No!
Port bottles in the 18th century were about half a modern (75cl) bottle,
I made some minor dietary changes after two episodes of gout, and haven’t had another in the last few years.
john77 said:
“I find it implausible that he could regularly drink a GALLON of port at one meal. We only have one gallon of blood in our bodies so that would double the flow of liquid through the veins and after extraction by the kidneys expand the bladder to six times its normal size.”
But it’s quite normal to drink a gallon (eight pints) of beer in an evening, so your argument that the fluid volume is unfeasible clearly isn’t true.
(Plus, as others have said, bottles were smaller then, probably around a modern pint, which makes it even more reasonable; six pints of beer in an evening is normal; six pints of port may be more alcohol, but it’s not at all an unlikely volume of fluid)
18th century bottle sizes are complicated.
1) Wine then was measured by the Queen Anne Wine Gallon, which was about six and two thirds modern pints, smaller than the Imperial gallon and smaller than the then beer gallon.
2) Bottles were a “reputed quart” or a “reputed pint”, a reputed quart being a fifth of a Queen Anne wine gallon, or about one and a third modern pints, or about 750ml, the modern wine bottle.
3) Bottle making was not a precise art, and wine merchants were not always reliable, so actual bottle sizes could vary.
There’s a fascinating analysis of it here:
https://sha.org/assets/documents/Cylindrical%20English%20Wine%20and%20Beer%20Bottles%20-%20English.pdf
In summary, my guess would be that a ‘pint’ of port, which I think was the standard measure at the time, would be half of a “reputed quart”, so roughly half of a modern bottle.
@snag
Allopurinol mostly does the trick of prevention, but when I get an attack, it lingers long.
I’ve never had an attack since my first, over 30 years ago. I’d say if you’re still getting attacks, you should ask your GP if your allopurinol dose should be increased. For many years I was on 300mg, but then (in collaboration with my GP) I reduced to 100mg. My annual blood test gave slightly elevated urates, so it’s back up to 200mg.