Hi all. Hope someone can help me with this sudden new development which i think might be the onset of gout, but I need a bit more help with self-diagnosis.

A few days a go, i woke up in the night with a sharp stabbing type pain in my right big toe. The pain seemed to be in the cuticle around the bottom of the toe nail - almost as if I had a splinter in it. Bending and flexing the joint did NOT hurt at all. There was no redness or swelling.

At first I thought it was just some sort of problem with the skin around the bottom of the nail (cuticle?) or the splinter-type theory. But then I realised that the pain came and went even if there was no pressure or rubbing on the skin around the nail. It would keep me awake for 5 minutes or so then happen again a few hours later. For three days it happened only at night but today I have felt it a couple of times - once when walking around and once when just sitting watching the TV. Best described as a sharp stabbing pain that starts mildly for a few seconds or a minute gets worse quite sharply and is uncomfortable without being excruciating (yet?) for a few minutes then stops completely. Only to re-appear a few hours later. Exercising the joint by rubbing, flexing, walking around neither makes it worse or better. It just seems to come and go.

I am 63 years old (male) fit and normally very healthy. I play golf 3 times a week - which is equivalent to walking about 15 miles (even if I hit the ball straight!). I am not over-weight (rather thin actually) and eat pretty well. Not too much red meat and some fish but not prawns etc. I eat plenty of vegetables - not beans! However - here is the big issue - I just don't drink anything like the correct amount of water. I guess I always knew this, but didn't realise how low the levels were (been measuring it for a few days now). I doubt if I drink even two glasses of water a day, plus a couple of cups of coffee. I drink a couple of small cans of beer most lunch times and 1/2 bottle of wine a night - no weekend binges or anything. Clearly the beer doesn't help as I am reading in this forum and related sites.

I am going to make a big effort to up the water intake - I figured I should be around 2 litres per day in the winter here in Spain and perhaps 3 litres when it gets hotter.

First, do people think this might be the very early signs of mild gout, and, if so, apart from the water intake anything else I should be doing? Of course, if it gets worse, I'll go see a doctor, but haven't been to one in over five years - so if I can fix it myself I would much prefer that.

Thanks in Anticipation....