Why kidney stone happens?

Kidney stone issue is a very common problem at my office in Cambodia. After reviewing the literatures on the incidence of kidney stone, there was a proportion for at least 10% of US and European population that facing a kidney stones one time in their whole lifetime. But when I try to get more research in Cambodia, I was surprisingly with the numbers that coincidently flew up to touch a 17% of kidney stone rate showed. In this topic we will figure out about why kidney stone happens.

Why kidney stone happen? – This question is extremely hard to give a certain answer, because it happens from multifactorial factors. When we all know that kidneys are the organ which functioning on infiltration waste-products from our body and then excrete out by urination, so the kidney is the place where some ions for example Calcium, Phosphate, Uric acids and Oxalate – always be in a high concentration. When ions reached their maximum concentration, then they start stone formation that is so-called Kidney stones.

The factors can be categorised into 2 major factors.

1. Host factor
   • Race – African American and Caucasian were reporting more incidence than Asian, also some specific race especially Cambodian and Northern east part of Thai population usually suffered a genetic-related kidney stone disease.
   • Sex – Men are suffering from kidney stone than women with a ratio around 2:1 worldwide.
   • Age – Aging is reported around between 40 – 60 years old.
   • Underlying medical history – Obesity and Diabetes can increase the kidney stone rate 55% and 59%, obviously. Basically, for all those diseases will make our body excrete more ions in the urine.

2. Environmental factors
   • Geographic location – The countries area which located in tropical climate has more reported on kidney stone incidence. The reason is, people who live in hot weather condition tend to lose body fluid easily from sweating and consequently will experienced in less urine output that will make urine ions more concentrated.
   • Water intake – Plenty of water intake is the easiest way to reduce kidney stone rate. In every 500 mL of increasing daily water intake will significantly reduce the kidney stone incidence. (Recommendation daily water intake – 2,500 mL)
   • Nutrition – High sodium intake, high oxalate intake, high Vitamin C intake, imbalance calcium intake are all involved problems and it tend to increase more risk of kidney stone formation.
   • Less citrate intake – Citrate ion possessing an effective on anti-kidney stone, it is riches in Citrus fruit for example lemons. A cup of lemonade juice daily is recommended in patients who aware on kidney stone formation.

Sometimes kidney stone has another name called a metabolic disease because lots of involvement caused that. It might make the patients suffering from this kind of problem. Well educated patient with a strong Doctor-Patient binding would require for the possibly chronic problem like this – Kidney stone problem.

Any questions, you can feel free to discuss with me.