New game, new rules. And the guys no longer have the edge ““ at least in the costly game of kidney stones.
Also gone is the old cookie-cutter advice of “more liquids and no dairy,” said urologist Dr. Stephen Brewer of St. Elizabeth Physicians.
“It’s a funny story. Thirty-five years ago when I started studying medicine, it was almost exclusively men. Now women have caught up. I don’t know why,” he said. It could be the diet is so homogenized, that we’re all eating the same things, or more women are in the workplace, or it’s in the genes, he suggested.
It all adds up to a monumental problem in the U.S., with 600,000 patients a year dealing with kidney stones. Health care costs are over $5 billion a year.
“Hydration is not bad advice. We’ve been giving it for years. But it doesn’t prevent kidney stones,” Brewer said.
Not much can be done to stop your first kidney stone, but once you’ve had one, treatment based on identifying and resolving the combination of risk factors means doctors are having a 90 percent success rate in preventing the second one. It can be life-altering, even if you only make a stone every 10 years.
New research and more sophisticated tests spell breakthrough.
“We’ve grown up with all the old wives’ tales”we need to move on,” said Brewer.
You should be evaluated by a urologist, nephrologist and a dietician if:
- You’ve had more than two kidney stones;
- You are young person and needed surgery to remove a kidney stone.
If you are older than 60 and you had a stone that passed, you are fine. After all, Brewer said, it took 60 years for the first stone.
But if you are young, say a 35-year-old pilot who is grounded because you passed a kidney stone, it’s time to be evaluated. “That guy is going to lose his job if they don’t get answers,” said Brewer.
The debilitating pain of a kidney stone is also a great equalizer.
It’s so intense that even men are likely to go to the doctor. Just don’t try to compare it to childbirth; that’s a red flag you don’t want to be waving. And there’s no little darling baby at the end of that journey. Just relief.
