Nearly 50. 25 years of gout. Still standing.

My name is Farhan. I'm based in the UK, and I had my first gout attack in the summer of 1999. I was in my mid-twenties, and I had absolutely no idea what was happening to my body.

That first attack came out of nowhere. One morning I woke up and my foot felt like it was on fire. I couldn't put weight on it, couldn't wear a shoe, couldn't walk properly for days. It took a while to get a proper diagnosis — gout wasn't exactly what I expected to be dealing with at that age.

Since then, I've had good years and bad years. Years where I managed it well, kept the flares infrequent, and got on with life. And years where it felt like I was constantly fighting it — adjusting medication, rethinking what I was eating, trying to figure out why the attacks kept coming.

What I noticed, over all that time, was how little honest, practical information there was from people who actually live with it. There's plenty of clinical guidance. There are plenty of articles telling you to avoid red meat and alcohol. But there's not much from someone who's been in the middle of a 3am flare wondering what to do, or who's sat in a GP's office feeling like their condition isn't being taken seriously.

That's what this site is. Not medical advice — I'm not a doctor, a researcher, or a healthcare professional of any kind. Just a man who's been managing gout for over 25 years, sharing what's worked for him, what hasn't, and what he wishes someone had told him at the start.

If any of it helps you, that's the point.

— Farhan