Have you or any of your loved ones ever had a kidney stone? Well,
I bet if you've had one you are dying to know how to get rid of them and what causes them,
Well, I'm Dr. Rena Malik, urologist and pelvic surgeon, and today I'm going to be talking
all about kidney stones and if you want to join our community. I make content about sexual health,
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so we're going to cover a few things during this video we're going to talk about how kidney stones
form what kind of symptoms you might have when you have a kidney stone what kidney stones actually
look like and lastly how long does it take to pass a kidney stone so let's get to it kidney
stones are extremely common about 1 in 11 united states adults will have a kidney stone at some
point in their lifetime that's a lot of people and most commonly people get them between the ages of
40 and 60. and so what causes them well there are certainly a number of risk factors or things that
are associated with people forming kidney stones you can have some metabolic abnormalities and what
that means is it can change the way your kidneys process urine so that you may have a higher
volume or lower volume of certain things that can either prevent or promote kidney stones also you
can change the acidity either the making it more acidic or more basic of the urine which can change
your risk for forming kidney stones so there's no way for you to know if you have a metabolic
abnormality without seeing a urologist or an endocrinologist and getting a 24-hour urine test
and some blood work so if you're concerned that you may have a problem because you keep forming
kidney stones make sure you get a full evaluation but let's talk about some of the things that you
might be able to change first and foremost and the easiest thing is how much fluid you drink so there
are number of studies that have shown that low urine volume meaning not drinking enough fluids
which makes less urine puts you at higher risk for getting kidney stones so the american neurologic
association recommends that people who form stones drink two and a half liters more of fluid and that
has been shown to decrease the incidence of kidney stones in people other things in your diet that
might put you at higher risk for kidney stones are having a high salt diet interestingly when
you eat a lot of salt it actually makes you excrete more calcium in your urine which can
put you at a higher risk for forming stones with calcium in them another thing that similarly can
another thing that can change the acidity of your urine is having a high amount of animal protein
so animal protein creates a higher acid load which then gets converted into your urine being
more acidic or having a lower ph which can put you at higher risk of stones and lastly having
a high amount of oxalate in your urine which is caused by eating things that have high levels
of oxalate in them like spinach rhubarb beets nuts those sorts of things can put you at a higher risk
for getting certain types of kidney stones and while i tell people there's a lot of things with
oxalate in them if you google high oxalate foods you can actually just see if you're having a lot
of one of those things and try cutting that back first before trying to radically change your diet
other things that are in your environment that can put you at higher risk or if you live in a
very hot or dry climate or you work somewhere where you're exposed to high levels of heat
this can cause higher levels of dehydration and can make it easier for you to form kidney stones
obesity is another big risk factor so being obese or having a body mass index of 30 or higher which
you can figure out by going online and putting in your weight and height onto a bmi calculator can
put you at risk because it changes the metabolic functions of your body so that you can actually
have some of those metabolic changes more often in obese people than non-obese people other
conditions specifically hypertension diabetes and issues with your cholesterol can also put
you at higher risk because it can change the ph of your urine itself other medical problems that
can put you at risk are if you have certain types of bowel disease or if you've had kidney stones
yourself before or family history of kidney stones and lastly there's a number of medications that
are known and associated with kidney stones which you can see listed here so if you've never had a
kidney stone before what are the symptoms that you might have well interestingly some people can have
kidney stones that are sitting in their kidney that cause them no pain whatsoever typically the
pain happens when that kidney stone starts moving down into the ureter or the tube that drains
the kidney to into the bladder and it usually gets stuck in three major locations one is called
the ureteral pelvic junction where the kidney connects to the ureter the second time is where
the ureter crosses over these vessels called the iliac vessels where it can get stuck because it
gets slightly narrow there and lastly is at the ureteral vesicle junction or where the ureter
meets the bladder and that's where it can also get stuck so typically if it gets stuck or causes some
blockage of the urine from the kidney because it's too big that's when people will experience
pain and the pain can be in the flank or the upper side of the back in the belly or sometimes even in
the groin and that's because particularly in men when testicles are formed they're formed inside
the abdomen and then as they grow in utero when they're babies they drop down into the scrotum
and so the nerve fibers for the testicles actually come from the upper part of the abdomen where the
ureter is and so sometimes people can feel pain in their testicle but actually have a kidney stone
other symptoms that you might notice if you have a kidney stone is symptoms of a urinary tract
infection particularly if urine gets blocked by the kidney stone that may cause urine to
not move like it normally does which puts you at a higher risk for infection so you might see
blood in the urine you might see risk of pain with urination you might feel like you have to go more
often or more urgently to urinate particularly if that stone gets down close to the bladder
so what do kidney stones look like well kidney stones can look different depending on what
they're made up of and they can be made up of many different types of compounds most commonly we see
calcium in kidney stones but we can also see uric acid stones cystine stones other different types
of things that make up kidney stones so you can see they can look very very different depending on
what kind of stone you have so what if you don't have symptoms at all are you going to get them
well if you look at studies that looked at people who don't have any symptoms about one third of
people will get symptoms within that first three years and of that one-third of people maybe half
of that smaller group will end up getting a procedure to get rid of their kidney stones so
it's a very small percentage of that original pie and so if you're asymptomatic it's very reasonable
to continue to watch and observe them for time because they may not become a problem at all
however sometimes while they won't cause you pain they can put you at risk for recurrent urinary
tract infections so make sure that you do see a urologist if you start getting recurrent urinary
tract infections or talk to your primary doctor about getting some imaging to make sure you don't
have any kidney stones so if you're starting to feel symptoms of a stone how long will it take
to pass well that depends on size so that's where we get into size actually does matter
so depending on the size of the stone it can take up to 40 days or six weeks to pass a kidney stone
but what they found is that in people who have stones two millimeters or less the average time
is about eight days but if you look at all people with two millimeter stones it can take up to a
month for those stones to pass if they're between two and four millimeters the average time is about
12 days but if you look at all comers it can take up to 40 days and if they're larger than
four millimeters or four to six millimeters it can take on average 22 days to pass those stones but
for all comers can take up to 40 days as well but interestingly in that larger group or above four
to six millimeters half of those people could not pass the stone so if you have a large stone
above four millimeters about half of people will require a procedure to get those stones passed
and so very often it makes more sense to go ahead and get a procedure rather than suffer
through the pain if you're struggling with trying to pass a kidney stone what can you do to help it
pass well the biggest and most important thing you can do is drink a lot of fluids there's also
some data to suggest that taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications like motrin or aleve
or ibuprofen or naproxen can help pass kidney stones because it causes smooth muscle relaxation
of the ureter other medications that also do that are something called tamsilosin which is typically
used for people with an enlarged prostate there's also some data to suggest that sexual intercourse
can help past stones and help with pain relief and the reason being is that when you're having
intercourse your body releases nitric oxide and that nitric oxide also acts as a smooth
muscle relaxant so if you're up to it try having intercourse it might help you pass those stones
all right if you want to learn more specifics about kidney stones or other urologic conditions
please comment below and as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it