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Kidney Stones: Symptoms, Causes, Treatment and Prevention

Do you take pain in your side that travels to your belly or groin? Is it getting worse? Have you had issues using the toilet, such every bit blood in your urine or difficulty urinating? If so, you might have a kidney stone. Kidney stones are solid masses that course in your urinary tract when there are high levels of certain minerals in your urine. Normally, your urine is supposed to accept plenty water to forbid minerals from sticking together. If you have high levels of those minerals in your urine, they can clump together, forming kidney stones. The kind of minerals that dodder together determines what type of kidney rock you get. Read on to acquire how kidney stones class, what they're made of, what symptoms you may accept, and how they can be prevented and treated.

What are the different types of kidney stones?

Calcium oxalate or Calcium phosphate: You can go these if you accept adventure factors that increment the corporeality of calcium or oxalate in your urine. These include sure diets, some metabolic weather condition, high vitamin D levels, and intestinal bypass surgery.
Struvite: You can become struvite stones after a urinary tract infection.
Uric acid: If you have certain risk factors like chronic diarrhea, diabetes, or a high-protein diet, yous are at increased hazard of getting uric acrid stones.
Cystine kidney: Primarily arises in children with a hereditary disorder called cystinuria.

Risk Factors

Adults are much more likely to go kidney stones than children. And White males in their 30s and 40s are the most probable grouping to get kidney stones, although anyone can get one.

Risk factors for developing kidney stones include:

Existence overweight
Family or personal history
Dehydration, which makes your urine more concentrated and increases the gamble that minerals will clump together
Certain diets, such equally those high in salt, poly peptide, or carbohydrate
Digestive diseases and surgery, which impact the way your body absorbs minerals
Sure medical weather, like cystinuria, repeated urinary tract infections, gout, and cystic fibrosis
Certain medications, like dietary supplements, vitamin C, laxatives (when used also much), calcium-based antacids, and migraine medicines
Having an overactive parathyroid gland. This causes high levels of calcium in your claret.

Signs and Symptoms

The symptoms of a kidney stone include:

Severe, 1-sided hurting in the side or back that moves to the lower abdomen or groin. This pain comes in waves and varies in intensity.
Pain or burning with urination
Pink, red, or brown urine
Cloudy or evil-smelling urine
A constant need to urinate, more frequent urination, or urinating pocket-sized amounts
Nausea or vomiting

Sometimes kidney stones can make urine travel back into the kidneys and crusade a kidney infection. If you get a kidney infection, yous might besides go fever and chills in improver to your other symptoms. You lot may also notice that the hurting caused by a kidney stone may motion around or get worse every bit it moves through your urinary arrangement.

Diagnostic Tests

Doctors can utilize many different diagnostic tests to see if your symptoms might exist caused by a kidney stone:

Blood tests: Your doctor can cheque your blood to see if it has high calcium or uric acid levels.
Urine tests: A 24-60 minutes urine collection exam may show that at that place are too many minerals in your urine.
Imaging: Sure imaging tests can exist used to run into kidney stones in your urinary tract.

If your kidney stones have already come out in your urine, you should hold on to them and requite them to your doctor. Your doctor can analyze them to determine what type of kidney stones they are.

Treatment

Treatments vary depending on the size of the stones.

Small Kidney Stones

Pocket-sized kidney stones are eliminated past passing them or letting them become out of the torso through your urine. There are a few things you can practice to help laissez passer a kidney stone:

Drinking h2o: Drinking two to three quarts of water a day volition keep a lot of fluid in your urinary system and prevent minerals in the urine from clumping together.
Hurting medication: Passing a small kidney stone can cause discomfort or hurting. Your physician may suggest you take ibuprofen or naproxen sodium to help manage your pain.
Other medications: Your medico might prescribe a medication called an alpha-blocker, which relaxes your ureters. These are the tubes connecting your kidneys to your bladder. This helps kidney stones laissez passer faster and less painfully.

Larger Kidney Stones

If your kidney stone is so large that information technology tin can't laissez passer on its own, you can do other things to remove the stone:

Surgery: A kidney stone can be taken out of your ureters surgically in a process chosen a nephrolithotomy. This may be done for struvite kidney stones, for case, since they tin get very large.
Breaking up the stone: Your medico can laissez passer a thin tube called a ureteroscope into your ureter through your urethra and float. This tube tin can be used to pause the rock into smaller pieces. Your doctor may besides utilise a procedure chosen shockwave lithotripsy to interruption upwards your kidney stone. This uses sound waves to break the stone into smaller pieces.
Parathyroid gland surgery: This organ in your neck makes the parathyroid hormone. This is a substance that increases the amount of calcium in your body. If your parathyroid gland is overactive, you'll have high calcium levels, leading to kidney stone formation. If this happens, surgically removing your overactive parathyroid gland stops the formation of stones.

Prevention

Steps you tin have to prevent kidney stones include:

Drinking a lot of water
Eating few foods with high levels of oxalate, a mineral that can lead to the formation of calcium oxalate kidney stones
Keeping your nutrition low in sodium and protein
Non taking calcium supplements or calcium-based antacids

Though you should avoid taking calcium supplements, calcium in your diet is fine and does non increase your hazard of kidney stones.

Next Steps

Yous should see your doctor if you're having:

Pain so severe that you take difficulty getting comfortable
Blood in your urine
Pain with nausea and vomiting
Pain with fever and chills
Difficulty urinating

Talk to your doctor most your symptoms. If you've already passed the kidney stone, give information technology to your dr. to clarify. They can tell you what blazon of stone y'all take, what treatments will work best, and what you tin can do to prevent getting more kidney stones in the future.

Resource Links:

"Kidney Stones" via Cleveland Clinic
"Kidney Stones" via Mayo Clinic