Kidney Stone Pain ... Is It Truly As Terrible As Everybody Suggests?

People who have experienced kidney stone pain speak almost reverently about the experience:

"Excruciating"

"I wanted to die"

"Absolutely the worst thing that ever happened to me"

"It's like a knife being stabbed in your gut, and then twisted"

Then it the old standby, the one everyone's heard, emphatically stated by any mothers who have had a kidney stone ...

"It was a lot worse than giving birth!"

Can kidney stone pain actually be all that bad?

Fine, I can give you a definitive answer when I say ...

YES!

You see, I've had more kidney stones than I can remember over the last 20-plus years. I'm a big, tough, ex-football player guy and lots of the stones I've had have had me laying in a fetal position and whimpering like a child. I'd have done anything, and I mean anything, to get a little kidney stone pain relief.

Kidney stones are nothing new, as scientists have actually found evidence of kidney stones in an Egyptian mummy over 7,000 years old (I bet I know what killed the unfortunate pharaoh!). Over 3 million people visit health care vendors and there are over 500,000 emergency visits because of kidney stones.

What Leads to Kidney Stone Pain?

Surprisingly enough, physicians are not even sure what causes kidney stones, but know why they can cause such pain.

Your kidneys filter your blood, creates urine, remove waste from your body, and help control your critical electrolyte levels. Urine moves from your kidney through narrow tubes referred to as ureters into your bladder, and then empties through a wider tube called an uretha.

In some people, chemicals cyrstallize in the urine and form what is the beginning of a kidney stone. These are very small, but gradually grow with time. Most kidney stones, when they're small, in fact pass out of the human body undetected through the ureter, bladder, and ethetha.

Troubles begin when these crystal stones grow larger. As long as they're in the kidney, they rarely cause troubles.

But when then enter the ureter, that's when things can get painful.

Commonly, you feel a very quickly and very sharp, cramping pain in your lower back and side near your kidney or in the lower abdomen. This sudden pain is often accompanied by nausea, and vomiting.

Once in the ureter, the stone acts like a dam ... the kidney keeps pumping out urine, the urine gets blocked by the stone, and the kidney and ureter begin to swell. It is this swelling that can cause such excruciating pain.

Kidney Stone Shapes Once in the ureter, the muscle tissue in the wall of the ureter attempt to squeeze the stone along it's way. Both the size and the shape of the stone affect how easily it moves along the ureter (I once had a 4mm "jagged" stone that ripped and tore its way down my ureter causing a lot of bleeding and pain that was FAR WORSE than a 10mm stone that was smooth and seemed like a bullet).

(However, if you ever experience chills and fever throughout an episode, it might indicate an infection and you really, really need to contact a doctor immediately. You don't want to mess with an infection, specially a kidney infection.)

While the urine backup is what causes most of the pain, it's also what can push the stone down and into the bladder and which generally stops the kidney stone pain.

If you're prone to kidney stone pain, you should be happy to learn there are natural ways that might help with the pain, help dissolve the stone, and aid you pass it quickly and fairy painlessly.

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