Kidney Stone Diet Tips You Must Know

Kidney stones are a painful condition that you want to get rid of any way you can. While there are several causes of kidney stones, and a few different kinds, one of the most important factors in treating them is your diet. Some of the tips here will apply to you more or less depending on the kind of kidney stones you have. If you don’t know, you might want to find out. If you’ve been x-rayed, your doctor can tell you. For example, if your kidney stones contain calcium, you want to reduce (though not eliminate) calcium in your diet. The same goes for oxalates.

Water and Fluids

No matter what kind of kidney stones you have, you definitely want to increase your intake of water. It is usually recommended that you drink between two and three quarts of water per day, preferably filtered. This is the single best way to dissolve and kind of kidney stone so that it passes with your urine.

Other fluids can be good as well, but in addition to, not in place of pure water. This includes juices made from kidney-friendly fruits, especially cranberry and watermelon. Lemons are also very good for general detoxifying. You can squeeze fresh lemon into anything, such as herbal teas, salad dressings or just water (adding lemon to water is one exception to the above rule, as this does not count as a separate beverage like drinking juice).

Foods To Reduce or Avoid

In general, you should avoid junk or unhealthy foods as much as possible. This will help you detox and, along with the other tips, speed up the dissolving of your kidney stones. This includes most sweets made from refined sugar, unhealthy fats (found in most junk foods, as well as many fried foods), soda, caffeine (if you don’t want to give up caffeine completely, drink one or two cups of green tea per day), , alcohol and carbohydrates made from white and other processed flours.

Certain foods that you should reduce but not entirely eliminate (as they are necessary) when you have kidney stones are high protein foods, calcium-rich foods and supplements and oxalate-rich foods. Oxalates are the trickiest, as they are present in many foods that are basically good for us, including spinach and other dark leaf vegetables, blueberries, nuts, beans, beets, chocolate and blueberries. Again, you don’t have to eliminate these completely (unless it has been determined that your kidney stones are oxalate in nature), but cut down on them.

These tips should help you to balance your body and pass your kidney stones naturally. In general, the best kidney stone diet is a healthy one, with a few modifications.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 1:32 am and is filed under Kidney Stone Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.