Low-Calcium Diets: Said to be One of the Most Common of Kidney Stone Causes
Kidney stone development is no joking matter, and should be accordingly dealt with, before conditions get any worse.
Basically, kidney stones, or Renal calculi, are solid concentrations, or crystal aggregations of materials found in urine. Typically, these materials exit the body along with the exit of urine. They become problems when they build up, to sizes which could cause clogging in the urinary system's pathways, leading urine out of the body. Kidney stones come in various sizes, with some growing as large as a grapefruit, while some are about as small, or smaller than, a grain of sand. Bottom line, it is when they grow big enough to cause "clogging" in the urinary system when they become rather problematic. When kidney stones start growing as large as two to three millimeters, this is when they become "big" problems.
The terms Nephrolithiasis and Urolithiasis are used to define the type of kidney stone build up condition. Nephrolithiasis refers to the calculi presence in the kidneys themselves, while Urolithiasis refers to the calculi presence in the urinary tract.
There are actually types of kidney stones, defined by the materials which make them up. One of the most common of these kidney stone types would be that of the Calcium Oxalate Crystals type of kidney stones. As diet is one contributor in kidney stone causes, logically one would think that too much calcium is actually one of the many kidney stone causes. But recent studies have shown that this isn't so when talking about kidney stone causes, with this variety of kidney stone. In fact, low-calcium diets stand to be one of the kidney stone causes, theorized to be so because of calcium's role in binding ingested oxalate in the gastrointestinal tract. Because the calcium levels get low in low-calcium diets, the available oxalate for absorption into one's bloodstream is raised, eventually leading to the building up of calcium oxalate crystal kidney stones.
In a nutshell, low-calcium diets could be said to be one of the many kidney stone causes.
Other types of kidney stones includes the struvite type of kidney stones, the uric acid type of kidney stoens, and the cystine type of kidney stones. Kidney stone causes of
the struvite type of kidney stones are often associated with urea splitting bacteria, like Proteus mirabilis. Kidney stone causes of the uric acid type of kidney stones are mostly associated with conditions which are causative to high blood uric acid levels. Kidney stone causes of the cystine type of kidney stones is associated with conditions where cystine is accumulated in urine, typically those suffering from Cystinuria.
