In the outpatient clinic, we often encounter such patients, who suddenly cannot walk with pain in the joints of the lower limbs, some are carried into the clinic by their families. Checking the blood, the uric acid is increased, which is gout. Typical gout has a rapid onset, mostly waking up in the middle of the night with foot pain and obvious redness, swelling and heat in the painful joints. 60-70% of patients first have pain in the single joint of the bunion, 90% have pain in the bunion of the foot, and the next joints prone to gout are the toe-plantar joints and ankle joints. Some patients may have one attack and then never have another attack, some may have one attack for several years, and some have several attacks per year. In some cases, the more frequent the attacks, the more joints are involved, the more severe the symptoms, and finally the formation of gout stones and chronic arthritis. There are four stages of gout disease: the asymptomatic hyperuricemia stage, in which patients have no discomfort and are mostly detected during physical examinations. The second stage is the acute gouty arthritis attack, the third stage is the intermittent gout attack, and the fourth stage is the gouty stone and chronic arthritis and gouty nephropathy stage. Gout stones can cause bone erosion in the joint area and fibrosis of the surrounding soft tissues, further causing stiffness and deformity of that joint. Uric acid salt deposition in the tissues of the kidneys can cause chronic progressive interstitial nephritis, which can lead to kidney failure at an advanced stage. How does gout occur? Gout occurs when there is too much uric acid in the blood. Just as diabetes is a disorder of glucose metabolism and hyperlipidemia is an abnormality of fat metabolism, gout is a disorder of protein metabolism. The end product of purine metabolism in the body is uric acid. If there is a problem with purine metabolism, resulting in increased production of uric acid, hyperuricemia will develop. When the blood uric acid is higher than normal, under the action of high purine diet, general fatigue, alcohol abuse and other triggers, uric acid salt may precipitate crystals and be deposited in the joint cartilage, bursa, olecranon, tendon sheath, peri-articular tissues, subcutaneous tissues and kidney interstitium, causing various symptoms. Why are there so many patients with gout nowadays? It has to do with our changing lifestyles. When I first became a doctor gout was rare. Gout used to be a common disease in the West and rare in the East. In the last twenty years, our lives have changed a lot, with excess calories in food and an exponential increase in protein foods, and now, gout has become the new epidemic.