Medical Questions » Kidneys and Bladder Questions » Question No. 548
| Question: | My wife wants to know what causes kidney stones and how can she avoid having more, as she has suffered great pain with them in the past. |
| Answer: | The kidney acts to filter the blood, and removes excess water and wastes. If these wastes become too concentrated, or altered in some way, they can precipitate out and form a crystal that slowly grows into a stone.
Once the stone has formed, one of three things can happen to it.
Most stones are flushed down the tube that leads to the bladder from the kidney (the ureter) and are passed out of the body with the urine while still microscopic in size. These cause no trouble at all, and you do not know that they have been present.
A small number of stones may slowly and steadily grow in size until they are the size of a grape, or even a ping-pong ball. These big stones may completely fill the urine collection chamber of the kidney. They usually cause no trouble, but they may be the source of repeated kidney infections and pain.
The third group is the most troublesome. These stones, from one to five millimetres in length, can enter the ureter. This fine tube is very sensitive, and as the stone is pushed along the tube by the pressure of urine behind, it scrapes the tube wall causing the intense pain that sufferers experience.
There is no simple way to avoid kidney stones, but drinking plenty of fluids (mainly plain water) will help flush the kidneys out regularly and reduce the chance of anything but the smallest crystals forming.
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