They can cause tremendous pain—-talking about kidney stones—what do we know about them, who's most at risk and how do you deal with them?
"I felt lower back pain on my right side that I didn't understand and it went away for a couple of days and then a few days later the pain in my side was bad!" Nicole Hare-Hill, the assistant News Director here at News 3, said, "I will say I've never felt pain like this before— it's....it's bad!"
She recently discovered the source of that extreme pain, "There was a lot of blood in my urine, so that's what kinda made me go, oh, I need to go get help. So I went to the emergency room, and they did all kinds of tests, including a CT scan and that's when they determined I had a sizeable kidney stone."
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She made an appointment with Dr. John Liu at Urology of Virginia, who explained what causes them.
"Usually due to the concentration of these particles in the urine becoming high and then they form into crystals and then they eventually grow into stones," he said.
They may be small, but as they move through your body---the pain can be unbearable, as Nicole knows all too well, "I've had two hip replacements and had a lot of pain going into that into those surgeries but nothing like this—this is unreal!"
So, what did Dr. Liu do to help Nicole? "Nicole's case—- we ran a camera up to her stone. A lot of technology involved, you know—these tiny cameras that we can pass into the body and run the camera up to that narrow channel, the ureter in the kidney, and be able to visualize the stones and then passing a little laser fiber through the camera to allow us to break the stone and use a little basket to grab it 2809 and take it out," he shared.
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Once they remove your stones, you don't get to hold onto them as souvenirs. "I asked if I could keep the kidney stone, and they said no because they want to send it away to test it to determine where this came from, how I got it, and how to prevent it from happening again," Nicole said.
Sometimes, the stones are due to who you're related to. "We do see it often times it can run in families, so there's a genetic propensity for forming these stones," said Dr. Liu.
And Nicole said her father has had them. "He's had at least two kidney stones, one as recently as last December."
Dr. Liu said there are also diet factors to consider, "A majority of the stones we treat are made of calcium oxalate. Oxalates are found in a lot of different food groups, lot of healthy foods actually, like green leafy vegetables, especially things like spinach. We know that eating a lot of foods that are high in salt tends to drive up calcium concentration in the urine, so cutting down on salt in the diet will reduce calcium level in the urine. Eating too much meat, eating too much animal protein can increase risk of uric acid formation, and increase acidity of the urine."
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Dr. Liu stressed one simple thing we can all do, "The most important key is drinking lots and lots of water. For kidney stone formers we recommend they drink enough fluid that they're making at least two to three liters of urine a day."
But if you're left wondering---what can I eat? Dr. Liu pointed out, "It depends on your risk factors—if you've never had a kidney stone and you don't have any family history of kidney stones, you really don't have to go to extreme measures of changing your lifestyle and changing your diet."
Meanwhile, back to Nicole---how's she doing now? "I had the procedure less than two weeks ago and I am 100% better. I feel like a different person—-the pain is gone, the nausea's gone—the vomiting's gone."
And remember, Dr. Liu said one of the most important things you can do to try to ward off kidney stones is to increase your water intake significantly—-he added it helps to include some lemon juice.
