 |
||||
Skipping Stones Maintaining a healthy diet may help you avoid kidney stones 
If there weren’t enough reasons to maintain a healthy diet, researchers concluding an 18-year study have another one for you: a diet rich in fruit and vegetables and low in salt, processed and red meats and sweetened beverages may be an effective weapon against kidney stones. Kidney stones usually form due to an imbalance of salts and fluids, among other things found in the urinary tract and kidneys. Many medications created to combat the stones come with unpleasant side effects. The side effects of the diet plan from study leader Dr. Eric Taylor, called DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), include lower incidence of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and other chronic diseases. Dr. Taylor, a nephrologist at the Maine Medical Center, Portland, Maine, and colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, conducted three separate studies that tracked more than 240,000 patients and their development of kidney stones relative to their diets. Of that group, 5,465 participants suffered stones. The studies broke the participants into groups of men, younger women – both studied for 18 years – and older women – the largest group, at 101,837 people, studied for 14 years. From its data, Dr. Taylor’s team was then able to construct an eight-component DASH plan. The basics: a diet high in calcium, vitamin C, potassium and magnesium and low in sodium helps prevent the stones. Those with such a nutrition profile were as much as 45 percent less likely to develop kidney stones. These reductions were independent of age, body size, fluid intake and other factors related to kidney stones. Along with fruits and veggies, legumes, low-fat dairy products and whole grains are cornerstones of the DASH plan. The study appears in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Gainesville, Fla. |
||||
|
||||
