Evo Magz v4.7

Years ago, when I was editor of a men's magazine, waking up with a pounding head after a night out wasn’t exactly unusual. (Hey, those booze reviews weren’t going to research themselves.) But this summer after having just two civilized beers the night before at a work event, I woke up with a totally different kind of bodily pounding—it was in my foot.

At first I thought I must have slept on it funny. But as I tried to walk it off and felt the pain in my ankle and foot explode with each step, I began to wonder if maybe I had dropped a piano on it and somehow forgot. It was red, hot, swollen, tender—not at all a happy foot. Had I twisted my ankle at the gym? I tackled this medical issue the way men tend to (i.e., ignored it, hoping that if I said, “I’m fine, I’m fine,” enough, I would trick my body into actually being fine).

When I woke up in the middle of the night with pain so bad I wanted to chop my foot off, I knew Advil wasn't going to save me. I finally I gave in to my wife’s gentle suggestions that I "stop being so stubborn and go to the doctor."

The doctor checked me out, ran some blood tests, and called me with the official diagnosis: “You have gout.”

Gout? Wait, wasn't that “the king’s disease” I vaguely remembered from 6th grade history? Isn’t that something only Benjamin Franklin and dead French people named Louis got?

No, I learned that gout—a form of inflammatory arthritis brought on by a build-up of uric acid crystals in the joints—is an increasingly common diagnosis: 8-12 million Americans have it, according to rheumatologist Michael Pillinger, MD, Professor of Medicine, Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Men typically first develop the condition in their 20s and 30s (I’m in my 40s). Women rarely get it that young because female hormones are protective. Go hormones! But don't get too excited, ladies, Dr. Pillinger cautions: “After menopause women become much more vulnerable to gout and begin to catch up.”