subject says it all.
I’m not sure what causes kidney stones, and I’ll be interested in what informed answers appear here. I suspect “not drinking enough water” isn’t a cause, but I haven’t researched this.
I only came in to say that, when I lived in Utah (where the water was so mineral-filled that I had stalatites hanging from my bathroom faucet, and had to chip them away with my pocket knife) one of the foreign grad students only drank bottled water because he was afraid the high mineral content would give him kidney stones. But as far as I know, the intermountain westy doesn’t have a higher incidence of calculi than anywhere else.
and have battling them off & on for a year and a half two years after I moved to a house with well water. My water is heavily filtered & softened (that cost me a lot to do.)
My urologist says DO drink lots of water and for the type of kidneystones I’m dealing with eat/drink lots of citrus (lemons in particular)
Also I was told not to eat peanuts or drink beer or tea, which of course is about half my diet.
Not enough water causes kidneystones? Maybe more like drinking enough water helps prevent them; as in natural conditions may favor kidneystone production but adequate water intake is curative.
IMHO.
According to the WebMD website, lack of drinking can be a risk factor for developing the stones. I’ve had stones off and on for years now, and I drink all the fluid I can. Now if only I’d stop drinking soda pop…
I got kidney stones following a camping trip where I got altitude sickness and dehydrated.
Dehydration alone doesn’t really cause kidney stones, but an excess of water will DEFINITELY help to pass them before they get to a painful size.
And oh boy, it is painful. Drink your water, kids.
Stones form in the kidney and bladder because the concentration of whatever they are made of (varies by individual) climbs above a critical level. Think of rock candy forming in a saturated sugar solution. Your kidneys filter waste products from the blood but also act to keep your blood osmolarity adjusted. At a basic level, if your water intake exceeds your metabolic needs, your kidneys will dump the water into your urine, and the urine becomes more dilute. With dilute urine, it is less likely that the concentration of your stone-forming agent will exceed the level required for stone formation/deposition. Just being dehydrated will not cause stone formation in a ‘normal’ person - it requires a constellation of factors - but once you have had one stone, aggressive hydration is usually recommended to prevent recurrence. More info here.
If you have a symptomatic stone, it helps to have a lot of urine going through the pipes to help flush it out, if possible.