The Most PAINFUL Thing is a Kidney Stone - Dr. Berg

The absolute most painful thing that I’ve ever experienced in my life was a kidney stone.So this is a while ago before I had any awareness about health or diet.So one night in the middle of the night, I think about three o’clock in the morning,I was rudely awakened by the most severe pain I’ve ever experienced deep inside my body.So I got up, went to the bathroom and just laid on the floor for about 30 minutes.

trying to get relief. This pain was visceral pain. Now, visceral pain is some internal pain that youcan’t really tell where it’s coming from exactly. It’s very vague, but it was extremely severe.I was nauseous. I felt like vomiting. I didn’t know what the heck was going on,but it felt like something inside my body was like in a vice grip and there was tremendous pressureand internal back pain that I just could not relieve no matter what position I got in.

It would kind of come in waves. It would kind of feel better and then worse. And I just wanted tosleep because I was so exhausted and I didn’t want to take any medication initially, at leastuntil later. I’m like, give me the morphine. And I didn’t want to wake up my wife, but it justgot to the point where I had to figure this out to see what the heck was going on. SoI woke up Karen. I said, honey, could you just take me to the hospital right now? She says,

can’t you just wait till the morning i’m so tired i said no we need to go right now i am dying andso she drove me to the hospital and i will say there’s nothing like kidney stone pain that causesyou to lose your sense of humor real fast now the pain from kidney stone can happen in a lot ofdifferent locations in your upper lower part of your back usually because the kidney stone is onone side you’re going to feel it either on the right side or the left side and it can shoot on

the side or right into your groin or in the lower abdomen it can feel like the pain is a little bithigher up like it could be a gallstone but it’s actually a kidney stone and it can make you verynauseous and want to vomit now the interesting thing about a kidney stone is that there’s notany pain receptors in the kidney itself there’s a lot of pain receptors in the ureter the littletube that comes out of your kidney which has a diameter about four millimeters okay and my kidney

stone was 10 millimeters okay so we’re trying to take a rock and push it through a tube thatdoesn’t fit and not only a rock but a rock that has jagged sharp edges and the reason i know thatis because about a month before this episode i was jogging and when i got back to the housei had a urinate and i was peeing blood and what was happening is this rock that had sharp edgeswas was kind of going up and down in my kidney completely tearing up the inside of my kidney

now you would think that would motivate someone to change their ways or do something orgo get it checked out but at that time my awareness was so low i didn’t do anythingabout it i thought maybe it’ll just go away now there’s nothing more than insane pain from aa kidney stone that will wake you up and force you to do something about it. So when we arrivedto the hospital, there was, of course, there was a line at the hospital and it was three o’clock

in the morning. And I get in there and I’m just like, give me some drugs now. So they gave memorphine. I felt some relief and I started to kind of massage my abdominal area. And that seemed togive me a lot of relief. I think what happened at the time is I kind of pushed the stone backup into the kidney and gave me some temporary relief for at least for a couple of days.So after a couple of days, the pain came back again, this time even worse. So I think at that

time, I think I just took some Tylenol and got rid of the pain. But then I scheduled an appointmentwith the kidney doctor and they did an ultrasound and a CAT scan and found I had this kidney stonethat was about 10 millimeters. And it was lodged right at the beginning of this little tube calledthe ureter. And the problem was it wasn’t able to get through this tiny little tube, but it wasstopping the urine flow. And that flow of urine just backed up in the kidney and caused swelling

of the kidney and created a lot of pain from the pressure. Now, what’s interesting about thislittle ureter that only has the diameter of like four millimeters is sometimes people can pass verylarge stones, even to the point where they’re 20 millimeters. And they don’t know why this is,but this ureter has a peristalsis function. It has contractile tissue. So it’s very similar tothe colon where you have this wave of contraction and relaxation to help push things through.

But unfortunately with my kidney stone, it wasn’t going through anywhere. It just created constantpain. So what I decided to do is do lipotripsy, which they put this sound wave through you andthey explode the stone with a sound wave, and then you’re peeing sand for a while. So I wentthrough the procedure and then started to really learn about how to prevent a kidney stone. AndI’m going to show you what I’m going to recommend based on firsthand information. The most common

type of kidney stone is a calcium oxalate stone, the combination of calcium and these things calledoxalates. Now, your body makes oxalates, and oxalates also come from food. Apparently,one of the main causes of a kidney stone is the body’s inability to get rid of oxalates.And the other thing you need to know is that 80% of the oxalates in your body are actually made byyour body. Only 20% comes from the diet, but you still want to avoid foods high in oxalates,

like tea. Now, part of the US has this belt around the lower states. They call it the kidney stonebelt because there’s a higher incidence of kidney stones and they correlated that from drinking toomuch sweet tea. So not only does the tea have oxalates, but the sugar in it can also aggravateand increase the risk of getting kidney stones as well. Spinach is very high. Almonds and almondflour is very high, as in a lot of the almond keto bombs that a lot of people are consuming.

Keely has a good amount of oxalates, chocolate, soy, potato, beans. And I have another videospecifically on oxalates that I’ll put down below. Now there’s quite a few theories on why peopledevelop kidney stones. Some people will say you’re consuming too much protein. There’s somemixed reviews on that. Some people say it’s from consuming too much vitamin C, but there’s alsoconflicting information on that, especially if you’re consuming vitamin C naturally from food.

But apparently ascorbic acid made synthetically, which is the part of the vitamin C complex,turns into oxalates. So I’m sure that doesn’t help. Then you have this thought that you’reconsuming too much calcium. But the thing is, if there’s enough calcium in the diet,it won’t dump into the kidney. They found that if you’re deficient in calcium, you can have higheramounts of calcium in your kidney. So again, there’s mixed reviews on that. And then there’s

this idea that if you’re consuming a high salt diet, that that causes kidney stones, but there’salso conflicting information on that as well. And then there’s also data that high fructose cornsyrup can increase your risk of getting kidney stones. And there’s a lot of data on that. Andthat seems to be a high correlation factor. And then there’s data on citrates. Apparently,if you’re prone to kidney stones, you have low citrates. And so citrate helps to prevent the

binding of calcium to oxalates. And if you consume like lemon juice that’s high in citrates,you can help to lessen the risk factor. And there’s been quite a few reports of peopleconsuming like a cup of lemon juice every single day to help dissolve their kidney stones andapparently with some good results. But what I want to discuss today is the most important things youshould do to prevent kidney stones if you’re prone to kidney stones. So what you need to under