Kidney stones are one of the most uncomfortable thing in the entire world to suffer through. The pain has been compared to giving birth naturally. I have had kidney stones three times and given birth naturally once. I have to say, I think I would take giving birth over kidney stones. Yes, it really is that bad!
Every time I have had kidney stones I have asked the doctors why I get them. Every time they ask me the same thing. "Do you drink a lot of soda?" I say, "No, I don't drink soda." Then they say, "Then we have no idea." However, after learning more about the adverse effects of certain foods, I can pinpoint every kidney stone episode to what I ate during that time.
The function of the kidney is to cleanse the blood from waste products and to keep a constant salt and liquid balance. Also the kidneys regulate how much vitamins and minerals (such as phosphorus, potassium, and sodium) are released back into the blood after it has been cleansed. So diet can cause major problems for the kidneys if we put a lot of waste into our bodies that gets into the blood stream and also if we eat food that throws off the balance of certain vitamins and minerals that we need.
The first time I had an episode with kidney stones was about 3 years ago. At the time I had a flare up of the Epstein Barr virus and was taking copious amounts of vitamins and supplements to help my body recover from a relapse of Mono. I was drinking more water than I had ever before in my life to help my body absorb the supplements and to flush out the waste so I'd fully recover. (At least I thought that is what I was doing.) However, because our body can't absorb or use much of the supplemental vitamins that we take, all I was really doing was creating a major burden on my kidneys. And there is one thing that the body can't absorb at all from supplements and that is the gel capsule they are taken in. So as my kidneys were working, they filtered out the extra vitamins and minerals my body didn't need and attempted to get rid of the waste from the capsules. But in the end, kidney stones resulted.
The second time was right after I got pregnant about a year and a half ago. I decided that I was going to try and stay off of dairy because it was making me sick so I switched everything to soy. I drank soy milk, I cooked with soy milk, I completely substituted my original dairy with soy products. Well soy has a very large amount of oxalates. An oxalate is a compound that can bind with calcium, store in the kidney and cause kidney stones. In an article titled, "Soy Can Lead to Kidney Stones" http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/10/27/soy-kidney-stones.aspx it explains that oxalates have no nutritional value and the body cannot metabolize it either. It is only excreted through the urine. So in this process of the kidney attempting to get rid of this terrible compound, it binds itself to calcium, forming a stone, and blocks of the whole urinary system.
The third time I had kidney stones was about six months ago. I had to stay off of dairy again for my baby's sake while I was nursing because she is allergic to dairy. So when she stopped nursing I went straight back to dairy. (Even though it made me feel crappy I still had it a lot because I loved it.) Dairy contains a lot of phosphorus, one of the things that the kidneys have to filter out. Because I had been off of dairy for so long and then went back on it full swing, my kidneys were overloaded with phosphorus and again the result was kidney stones.
So now that I know what foods cause me the most problems for my kidneys (i.e. DAIRY, SOY, SUPPLEMENTS, and also other acidic food-meat, and citrus) I am doing my best to stay away from them so my kidneys will heal and I won't have to deal with that excruciating pain ever again. If you have problems with your kidneys or kidney stones as well, please, take the suggestion from one who knows too well, stay away from these foods. It will be a tremendous help!
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