Kidneys are one of the vital organs in your body. Their health and well-being are essential for your health. One of the most common kidney problems is stones. Kidney stones can be excruciating and problematic. A severe kidney stone is needed to be treated with medicines. Therapies like extracorporeal shockwave therapy, ureteroscopic stone removal, and laser therapies are the last resort for kidney stone removal. All these therapies can be very painful and are costly as well. They have some severe side effects as well. You may have heard that drinking water is essential for keeping your kidneys healthy and properly functioning. It is also helpful in preventing kidney stones and the treatment of kidney stones.
In this article, we will highlight the importance of drinking water for kidney patients and how you can avoid the formation of kidney stones by staying hydrated.
Importance for Kidney Stone Patients
Treatment
Water can be used to flush out kidney stones. Minimal stones can be treated by drinking excessive water. You can drink around 2.5-3 liters of water daily. It will help in dissolving small stones, and they will be excreted through urine. Until your doctor tells you to stop drinking water, drink enough water so that you excrete clear or white-colored urine.
Before starting medication or going for complex therapies, it is crucial to increase your water intake and try to solve the problem with water. It will not harm you in any way and will leave positive impacts on your body as well. Patients who undergo dialysis must not drink water more than the prescribed limit of their doctor.
Prevention of Kidney Stones
A paper published by Harvard places water as the most important factor in the prevention of kidney stones. The other methods being getting calcium in the prescribed amounts (people above 50 should consume 100 milligrams of calcium in the daily diet, along with Vitamin D (800-1000 International Units). It also mentions that you should reduce sodium intake and give up animal protein along with stone-forming foods such as beets, chocolate, spinach, and nuts.
To further strengthen our argument, we would like to refer to research that clearly mentions that daily fluid intake, which produces around 2.5L of urine daily, helps prevent kidney stone formation.
How Much Water Should You Drink to Prevent Stone Formation?
A healthy adult (male or female) must excrete around 2 liters of urine every day. If you are unable to urinate in this volume, there is something wrong with your kidneys, or you are simply not drinking enough water. Before freaking out, it is better to start drinking water. Every human being needs a different amount of water, but generally, 8-12 glasses of water (250 mL glass or 8-ounce glass) are good for every adult regardless of being male or female. You can also add a couple of lemon slices in the water to change the taste monotony or consume fruits and vegetables which have high water content.
Also read: Benefits of Lemon Water and When Should We Use It
If you are not used to drinking 8-12 glasses in a day, you must start slowly and set your goals. Start with one additional glass of water and then increase your intake. You can set your daily goals, associate small gifts like your favorite meals, watching your favorite TV show or movies, with drinking a glass of water.
Routine for Patients with Kidney Stones History
If you have suffered from kidney stones in your life, you must never ignore drinking water. You must drink enough water that you excrete around 2.5-3 liters of urine. The best way to ensure this is to drink sufficient water. You can associates small events in daily routine with drinking a glass of water. You can drink water after getting up from bed, having breakfast, leaving for work, lunch, coming back home, dinner, and then going back to bed.
Conclusion: Drinking water is important, but does the Quality of Drinking Water Matter?
As we have seen that drinking water is extremely important for kidney stones patients, but, do you know that your tap water contains a lot of impurities that can be harmful to your kidney’s health. For people suffering from kidney stones, it can be very detrimental if they drink unhealthy water. You need to make sure that you drink pure, hygienic, and healthy drinking water. For kidney stone patients, a Reverse Osmosis (RO) filtration system is the best. It ensures that nothing harmful remains in your water and filters all the impurities from water. For additional protection, you can buy a filtration system with a UV light.
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