If you’ve ever suffered from kidney stones, then you understand the importance of avoiding them at all costs. They cause a tremendous amount of pain, increase your likelihood of a hospital stay and/or surgery, and can make you fearful of when they are going to hit next.
Luckily, there are certain dietary changes you can make that will help prevent these tiny little bundles of suffering. So, if you want to stone-proof your diet, here is how:
- Reduce your sodium intake. The less salt you consume, the lower the amount of calcium you secrete in your urine and the fewer debilitating kidney stones you have. Remove the salt shaker from the table and eat fewer processed foods (think frozen meals, canned soups, and anything boxed) as they tend to be higher in sodium in an effort to improve their taste and elongate their shelf life
- Cut back on animal proteins. You can also prevent kidney stones by eating fewer animal proteins, thereby decreasing the amount of uric acid and calcium when you urinate. This means limiting or even eliminating eggs, meat, and fish from your diet. However, you’re going to want to be sure that you still get adequate protein daily, so you’ll want to get it in other methods via eating protein rich foods such as nuts and seeds.
- Increase your calcium intake. Although a lot of kidney stones are due to excessive calcium secretion, eating calcium rich food sources does not contribute to the problem, but actually helps it instead. Calcium binds to the other substances necessary to create stones and prohibits it from getting into your blood stream and causing you issues. A lot of dairy products are high in calcium, but you could take a supplement too just to be sure you get enough.
Kidney stones can be extremely painful. Save yourself some suffering by making these three dietary changes today.
