Lemonade for Kidney Stones?

Lemonade therapy for kidney stones?

Sounds pretty inviting, doesn’t it? What’s not so inviting is the uncomfortable, sometimes excruciating health problem that lemonade therapy is used to address: kidney stones.

A recent WebMD Medical News article explains that the natural citrate in lemon juice is exactly what helps prevent certain salts from forming kidney stones. Potassium citrate does the same thing, but some patients can avoid using this drug by upping their lemonade intake.

In a small study conducted at Duke University, 12 kidney stone patients on lemonade therapy were followed for four years. Results showed that subjects formed fewer kidney stones and formed them at a slower rate during the time they drank lemonade. During the four-year study period none of the subjects required medical treatment for their condition.

The medical director of the urinary stone center at the University of California, San Francisco, Marshall Stoller, M.D., offered WebMD this simple lemonade recipe: mix half a cup of concentrated lemon juice with seven cups of water. Dr. Stoller recommends using an artificial sweetener to avoid heavy sugar intake. Of course, swapping sugar for an artificial sweetener is not necessarily a healthy alternativebut that’s a can of worms we’ll open another day.

Dr. Stoller adds that people prone to develop kidney stones should drink enough liquids to produce 1.5 to two liters of urine each day. But before you up your fluid intake with lemonade, talk to your doctor to make sure this therapy will be a good fit for you.

Sources:
“F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit from Marijuana” Gardiner Harris, The New York Times, 4/20/06, nytimes.com
“Synthetic Marijuana Returning to Market” Associated Press, 5/16/06, ap.org
“Lemonade Helps Kidney Stones” Daniel DeNoon, WebMD Medical News, 5/24/06, webmd.com