My grandfather started complaining of lower pain in his back soon after his 63rd birthday. Massages didn’t help nor did painkillers. When he started upchucking his food and complaining of inability to urinate a week after that, my parents got really worried. But it was when he reported that there was blood in his urine that we finally took that fateful drive down to the hospital.

Granddad was in agony by that time, and he had good reason to be. Radiological imagining tests after an intravenous dye injection revealed that he had a kidney stone the size of a golf ball in his ureter. He immediately assumed that it was because he?s been taking calcium pills to ward off a brittle bone disease that ran in his side of the family. The doctors told him that there was no correlation between calcium and kidney stones, except that too little of it can lead to them. So much for folk wisdom.

Kidney stones are nothing but solidified minerals that can be anything from magnesium, ammonium, phosphate, calcium phosphate and uric acid. They come in various shapes and sizes. The smaller ones are usually passed out in the urine often a very painful process but granddad’s was obviously too big for this route. The shapes’ aspect of this can be problematic  his had rather serrated edges that had done some damage in there.

He was put on narcotic painkillers and anti-inflammatory meds and told that the easiest way of removing his kidney stone - shock wave lithotripsy ? would not work in his case. He had to undergo open surgery and still has the scar to prove it.

You can prevent kidney stones by drinking sufficient water to encourage a regular urine flow, decrease the protein, nitrogen and sodium in your food (your body will thank you in other ways, as well) and go easy on tea, chocolate, peanuts and cocoa. Even too much tomato or grapefruit juice can increase your risk.