Ok, hopefully I can avoid the ban on personal medical advice, I am asking about the science of anatomy here, and a chance to debunk yet another ‘home remedy’, not for any diagnosis or treatment.
Word on the street is that downing a mixture of Olive Oil & Lemon juice will both partially dissolve (by the acid in the lemon) a Kidney Stone, and lubricate the passage between the kidney and the bladder.
There are tons of internet pageswith successful anecdotes about how effective this ‘home remedy’ is.
I had kidney stones not that long ago and my husand came across this mixture- it was pure magic! I was able to pass mine with a few hours of drinking it. Works great (if you can keep it down!) 5 *
Someone also dissed it though:
*Let’s look at this remedy logically for a second. The kidneys filter the bloodstream and olive oil does not pass from the digestive system to the bloodstream to lubricate anything. The same goes for the lemon juice. The only thing that works is lots of fluids and time. *
Sadly this merely reminded me of my ignorance of human anatomy. I have no idea how it really works.
MD Dopers: So what is true? Does what you drink, like Olive oil, have any effect on ‘lubing’ your urinary track? What about the lemon juice acidifying your urine – is that true? If the Kidneys just filter blood, where is the actual urine coming from? How could it not pass through them?
(I realize that if it worked doctors would be prescribing it, but if it’s just a placebo, why so many internet postings?)
I have never heard that for kidney cleansing but I have for liver and colon cleansing. I tried it my self once as a skeptic. I have no idea what it did or if it worked or not but what came out the next morning was not olive oil or lemon juice. I can say that I did feel a little better and it didn’t hurt anything.
This looks like a variation on Hulda Clark’s “liver cleanse,” which also requires Epsom salt. It’s basically a formula that precipitates bile in the digestive tract, producing fatty lumps which the “therapist” then tells the [del]victim[/del] patient are “soft gallstones.”
I can’t even imagine how its supposed to work on kidney stones.
Is this the same Hulda Clark who claimed she could cure any cancer with naturopathic treatment? The same one who claimed to cure AIDS naturopathically? The same Hulda Clark who died in 2009 of. . .cancer?
When I had kidney stones any acidic drink made the pain much worse, and made me pee more often, thereby lowering the volume (and maybe also the pressure?) of the flow. It also amde any smll scratches (of which you’ll get many in the process) burn like fire.
The best thing was to drink lots of plain water, with an occasional dose of gatorade for electrolytes. Plain water would build up in larger quantities making the trip from bladder to toilet much less painful. I donoubt it affected the kidney to bladder journey much.
This sounds like a fairly easy treatment to test in a methodical manner.
I genuinely can’t believe that such a study has not yet been performed with the results readily available if such a study showed the efficacy of the treatment.
Wow…I thought I’ve read a lot of crazy diet/health stuff before, but this is an interesting new variant.
As to the oil: absolutely absolutely not. As mentioned before, the kidneys only have access to the bloodstream, not the gut, so any of this oil/acid mixture would have to be present in the bloodstream for it to conceivably work. However, oils and fats are NEVER found free in the bloodstream; it’s all too easy for them to oxidize which can then in turn damage cellular membranes which as you can imagine is a very bad thing. They are instead carried in these large lipid-protein complexes (‘lipoproteins’) you may have heard as LDL (‘bad’ cholesterol) or HDL (‘good’ cholesterol). What’s the point of me saying all this? These lipoproteins are far too large to be filtered out by the kidneys, and what’s more the body tightly regulates the transport of these particles. To wit: Oils/fats will never be found in your urinary system (and if it is you’ve got a problem)
For what it’s worth, acidifying your urine or alkalizing your urine is a valid medical technique done by health-care professionals via medications and such, and it is used to help with excretion of actual toxins or drugs in the body. Weak Acids will be trapped in the urine if you can alkalize the urine, and weak bases are trapped if you can acidify the urine. This is used as a method of treating certain drug overdoses. As always though, these sorts of decisions should be done by a health-care professional- so don’t just assume you can try to OD on your aspirin and try to figure out how to treat yourself. Go to the doctor for that sorta stuff.
When it comes to Kidney stones- well it varies. Here’s the problem- there are multiple different types of kidney stones made up of different crystals and such- different types of calcium stones, uric acid stones, struvite stones, and cysteine stones. For some of them, they are caused by having a buildup in your bladder/urine- and they can be precipitated out and turn into stones- so that’s an example where acidifying your urine would CAUSE certain kidney stones, and in other causes, alkalizing your urine would cause another type of stone. Each of the stones have various risk factors for them, genetic and environmental.
So again- I HIGHLY don’t recommend just going out and trying to acidify your urine just because you think you may have a kidney stone. Always go to your doctor if you are worried about such things, and let them work it up- because some stones the acid may help, but for others it may simply just worsen the problem, and you don’t really know what stones you’ve got until you go to the doctor and get some imaging studies and labs done. Once you’ve gotten your diagnosis, then feel free to ask your doctor about such advice, but it’s REALLY not a good idea to just try to self-diagnose and assume you’ve got a specific type of stone, and then also to assume that the best treatment for it is to self-treat.
So while the idea has merit, it’s also got drawbacks in that it can help some problems while worsening others. Best option- go to the doctor first, check it out, and then ask him if some other remedies may help (which is why you have some people who go out and buy the Cranberry juice to help decrease their chances of a specific TYPE of stone, it won’t help against all types of stones). Same with Orange juice- may help against a specific TYPE of stone, but not the same one as cranberry juice.
The best thing you can do to try to prevent Kidney stones is staying hydrated, and drinking plenty of water is probably the best overall general prophylactic treatment vs. trying these specific “cures” and “home remedies” which though it may help some people could invariable hurt others with a different condition.
I remember seeing something in a health food store touted as “Promotes Healthy Kidneys.” I think it was some kind of cranberry pill (but I could be wrong).
Which reminds me. There used to be this remedy (as seen on TV!!!) called Carters Little Liver Pills. I don’t recall that the TV ads ever said what they were supposed to cure. I guess you were just supposed to know that.
Well, I had no idea then, and none now (although you never see Carters Little Liver Pills anymore, or at least, I never have, and the ads are long gone). So what were people buying them for?
This is a popular alt med/Internet “cure”. The person who swills down the olive oil mixture eventually poops out lumpy stuff that’s supposed to be gallstones, but is just precipitated fat. Presumably if you’re gullible enough (and not too smart about anatomy) you can be convinced that it’s kidney stones too.
This stuff does not cause you to pass actual kidney stones. As to why there are so many positive testimonials, the reasons include cases where people had pain but no actual kidney stones, (the pain goes away, the “cure” gets credit), or someone passes stones and gives the worthless remedy credit. The people who got no relief from the remedy figure they were doing it wrong or that it might work some other time, and they don’t post on the Internet.
Honestly, if eating a lot of greek cooking could do this, do you really think doctors wouldn’t advise it all the time? I hate the conspiratorial nature of medical quackery.
I know someone who was given vegetable oil to drink by her doctor to get rid of stones, I thought kidney but possibly gallstones. This was about 20 years ago; was this accepted then and not now? She said it was horrible trying to keep the oil down but she did get rid of the stones, she said.(?) IIRC, she was going to Kaiser for her health care and they’re pretty mainstream.
