Kidney Stones - Understanding Them and Dealing With Them

If you have a kidney stone and don't know it, it may never affect you. Kidney stones such as this are called silent stones. They produce no symptoms and usually go away by themselves. Larger kidney stones, however, are less than silent. They make themselves known through incredibly, severe pain.

The most common symptom is pain in the abdomen. At first pain may be mild. You may think you have strained a muscle and just ignore the pain. If the stone becomes larger, or blocks your urinary tract the pain will worsen. In many cases kidney stone pain can become unbearable. When a kidney stone block the flow of urine in the urinary tract, the situation can become extremely painful. It can also cause pain when urinating or menstruating.

A stone will often cause symptoms that show up in the urine. When nearby tissue is damaged by the rough edges of a kidney stone, the result is usually blood in the urine. Sometimes the blood is visible, sometimes it is not. It may change the color of the urine to a brownish tint, or you may actually be able to tell it is blood. A compound symptom is that it becomes almost impossible to hold urine and the number of times one urinates increases.

When fever and chill accompany severe back pain, it is most likely the result of a stone. You may also experience pain in the genitals. Severe pain, infection and inflammation caused by damage to the urinary tract often cause the individual suffering from kidney stones to experience severe nausea and vomiting. These are all fairly common signs of a kidney stone.

You can't determine whether or not you have a stone based on symptoms alone, but these symptoms can direct a medical professional in the right direction to identify your problem. A medical professional should never rely on your symptoms alone to identify a kidney stone.

These are painful, but can be treated. The symptom may come on gradually, or hit you all at once. Everything depends on the size, growth and where the stone is located in the urinary tract. Get an exact diagnosis from a doctor. They will do a series of tests to determine if you have a kidney stone and will be able to identify the location and size of the stone using X-rays, CT scans, or ultrasounds.

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