Why Kidney Stone Patients are Compliant
If you are in severe pain, have blood in your urine, have fever or chills, or experience any other symptoms that warrant medical attention, get to your provider or an urgent care clinic. If you find out you have a kidney stone, you’ll likely do whatever it takes to avoid having that pain again.
What are kidney stones?
According to the National Kidney Foundation, a kidney stone is a hard object made from chemicals in the urine. Urine has various wastes dissolved in it. When too much waste is in too little liquid, crystals form. The crystals attract other elements and join together to create a solid that will get larger unless it’s passed through urine. Usually, these chemicals are eliminated in the urine by the body’s master chemist – the kidney. In most people, having enough liquid washes them out, or other chemicals in urine stop a stone from forming.
Some kidney stones are as small as a grain of sand, others as large as a pebble. Generally, the larger the stone, the more noticeable the symptoms.
Why are they so painful?
When a kidney stone causes irritation or blockage, it starts to hurt, rapidly increasing pain. In most cases, kidney stones pass without causing damage, but not without causing pain.
After a stone forms, it may stay in the kidney or travel down the urinary tract into the ureter. Sometimes, tiny stones move out of the body in the urine without causing much pain. But stones that don't move may cause a back-up of urine in the kidney, ureter, bladder, or urethra, which causes pain.
Pain relievers may be the only treatment needed for small stones. Other treatment may be needed, especially for those stones that cause lasting symptoms.
How can they be prevented?
Prevention is a good news/bad news scenario. The bad news is that kidney stones recur in up to 50% of patients in the first five years following the initial stone, according to the National Institutes of Health. Relapses occur more frequently, and the time between each stone is shortened.
The good news is that changes in lifestyle and dietary habits can reduce the recurrence rate by as much as 60%.
Staying hydrated, making healthy food choices, and exercising regularly to maintain a healthy weight can lessen your chance of getting a kidney stone.
