Kidney and urinary-bladder stones, which range from grit, sand, and gravel to the size of bird eggs, are mostly formed of crystals of calcium combined with phosphorus or oxalic acid. They are often removed surgically, but more stones usually form within weeks unless preventive measures are taken.
A few stones are mostly uric acid or the amino acid cystine. To prevent such stones, large amounts of fruits and vegetables, especially citrus fruits, should be eaten, thus producing an alkaline urine which keeps crystals of these substances in solution. When a sodium-urate stone has been ill passed, the dietary measures suggested for gout should be followed. The loss of cystine in the urine is said to be a hereditary error, which often means an unusually high genetic requirement for certain nutrients; a few cases have been helped by giving large amounts of cholin. To limit the cystine intake, protein may be restricted to 70 grams daily. The more common stones formed from calcium phosphate or oxalate.
The Remedy May Be Simple
Normally citric acid, synthesized in the body from carbohydrate, causes the urine to be sufficiently acid to keep minerals and oxalic acid crystals in solution. Oxalate and phosphate stones develop most rapidly when the urine is alkaline. If magnesium is lacking, however, citric acid cannot be produced, and the quantity in the urine immediately decreases, but it increases again as soon as magnesium is given. Persons unfamiliar with these acids and perhaps confused by them might think of oxalic acid as the villain and citric acid as the rescuing hero.
Kidney stones have now been repeatedly produced in animals deficient in magnesium. Each increase in magnesium decreased the number of stones. Oxalic acid remained high, however, as long as vitamin B6 was lacking. A vitamin-B6 deficiency alone causes both a tremendous increase in the oxalic-acid content of the urine and a decrease in the amount of citric acid. Giving adequate vitamin B6 with inadequate magnesium causes kidney stones to be largely calcium phosphate, the kind most common in America. Adequate magnesium with inadequate vitamin B6 results in oxalate stones, the variety particularly prevent in England but rapidly increasing here.
These experimental findings appear to apply equally to humans. Patients who had passed kidney stones (both oxalate and phosphate) over a ten-year period were given 250 milligrams of magnesium oxide daily. While taking magnesium, they passed no stones or grit; and the urinary losses of calcium and phosphorus dropped markedly, though they became excessive again when magnesium was withdrawn six months later. Immediately small stones began passing, but they stopped as soon as magnesium was resumed.
People who have passed oxalic-acid stones have been found to be deficient in vitamin B6. The absorption is increased by both magnesium and vitamin B2; and an injection of vitamin B6 enables such individuals to absorb the vitamin well thereafter by mouth. Persons who have passed calcium-oxalate stones excrete 16 to 30 times more oxalic acid than do normal individuals. Similarly, pregnant women, notoriously deficient in vitamin B6, excrete oxalic acid, which has decreased markedly after 10 to 20 milligrams of this vitamin are given daily.
The Ssource of Oxalic Acid
The amino acid glycine, improperly utilized when vitamin B6 is under supplied, changes into oxalic acid, which forms stones and also often causes sharp oxalate crystals to damage the kidneys. Radioactively labeled glycine, given to stone-formers, can be recovered as oxalic acid; in healthy persons it can be found only in body protein. When experimental animals are deficient in vitamin B6, the more glycine given them, the greater is the urinary excretion of oxalic acid; this excretion decreases immediately if the vitamin is given with glycine.
Other Influences
So many stones have been produced in rats and guinea pigs lacking vitamin A that the kidneys have I been filled with them, yet this finding has not been consistent. Dead cells, sloughing from the mucous membrane of the kidney tubules when vitamin A is under supplied, have apparently formed a base upon which calcium crystals are deposited. Similarly, kidney stones in man have at times been associated with symptoms of too little vitamin yet autopsies of persons who have died with stones have often revealed no signs of this deficiency. Obviously, other factors must be associated with a vitamin-A deficiency before stones are produced.
Stone-formers usually have an alkaline urine that contains bacteria and much ammonia. When vitamin A is inadequate, dead cells support the growth of millions of bacteria which quickly break urea into ammonia, causing the urine to become alkaline. Calcium crystals, which cannot dissolve in an alkaline urine, are therefore readily deposited as stones. In all probability, if bacteria reach the kidneys, a lack of any nutrient allowing cells to slough off, whether cholic or vitamin A or E, contributes to stone formation by supplying food for their growth.
A potassium deficiency, brought on by eating too much salt, refined foods causes the urine to be so extremely alkaline that minerals cannot be held in solution and they are easily deposited as stones.
Author Resource:-
David Crawford is the CEO and owner of a premature ejculation company known as Male Enhancement Group which is dedicated to researching and comparing male enhancement products in order to determine which male enhancement product is safer and more effective than other products on the market. Copyright 2010 David Crawford of vigrx plus This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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