TYPES OF PREEMPTIVE MEASURES FOR KIDNEY STONES

Obviously, part of preventing stones is to find out why or how you suffer from them. Understanding your medical, family and dietary history helps your health care provider find out how likely you are to form more stones in your kidney organ. This is because once your health care provider finds out why you are forming stones, he or she will give you tips on how to prevent them and they may include changing your diet and taking certain medications.

 

1. DRINK ENOUGH FLUIDS EVERYDAY

In case if you are not making enough urine, your health care provider may suggest you drink at least 3 liters of liquid in a day. This is a great way to lower your risk of forming new stones. Knowing how much you drink during the day can help you have a grasp of how much you need to drink to produce 2.5 liters of urine. Therefore, you should try to drink more to replace fluids lost when you sweat from exercise or in hot weather. Although all kinds of fluids count toward your fluid intake, however, it is best to drink mostly low-calorie drinks and this may also mean limiting sugar-sweetened or alcoholic drinks.

 

2. REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF SALT IN YOUR DIET

Most frozen foods and meats including salty cured meats, deli meats (cold cuts), hot dogs, bratwurst and sausages are high in salt and should be eaten moderately. Besides, all types of cheese, breads, salty snacks such as chips, pickles and olives, canned and bottled sauces, rolls and pretzels also fall into that category. This is the tips for people with high sodium intake and high urine calcium or cysteine. Owing to the fact that sodium can cause both urine calcium and cysteine to be too high, your health care provider may advise you to avoid foods that have a lot of salt. After all, some medical experts suggest that people with high level of sodium consumption should not eat more than 2,300 mg of salt per day.

 

3. EAT FOODS WITH LOW OXALATE LEVELS

This may be a good choice for patients with high urine oxalate. Eating calcium-rich foods with meals can often control the oxalate level in your urine. Urinary oxalate can be controlled by eating calcium. However, if doing that and it does not control your urine oxalate, you may be advised to eat certain foods which have less high-oxalate. Actually, nearly all plant foods have oxalate, yet, only a few of them contain a lot of oxalate. These foods include spinach, rhubarb and almonds. Perhaps, it is not necessary to entirely quit eating foods which contain oxalate since it all depends on why your oxalate levels are high in the first place.

 

4. PRESCRIBED MEDICATIONS

Changing your dietary pattern and increasing your amount of fluids intake may not be enough to prevent stones from forming. In fact, your health care provider may give you certain types of prescribed medications to take to help you with this. And of course, the type of stones and urine tests will help your health care provider decide if you need medications and which one is considered the best. In any case, some medications your health care provider may suggest are as follows:

- Thiazide diuretics. These are for the patients who have calcium stones and high levels of calcium in their urine. Thiazides lower urine calcium by helping the kidney take calcium out of the urine and put it back in the blood stream. When taking thiazides, you need to limit how much salt you eat, as these medications work best when urine sodium is low.

- Potassium citrate. This is for the patients with calcium stones and low urinary citrate, including for those with uric acid and cysteine stones. Potassium citrate makes the urine less acidic or more alkaline (basic). As it helps prevent cysteine and uric acid stones, this particular medicine also raises the citrate level in the urine; helping to prevent calcium stones.

- Acetohydroxamic acid (AHA). This is for the patients who produce infection stones. These stones form because of repeated urinary tract infections (UTI). AHA makes the urine hard for infection stones to form hence the best way to prevent them is to deter repeated UTIs (Urinary Tract Infections) caused by specific types of bacteria, and completely remove the stones with surgery if necessary.