Magnesium & Kidney Stones

Painful disorders of the urinary tract, kidney stones cause much distress among sufferers. Magnesium, a healing mineral with a track record of alleviating many health conditions, may have a role in preventing and treating kidney stones, too.

Symptoms

• Also known as renal calculi, kidney stones form as a result of crystallization of waste matter in urine. Affecting men twice as commonly as women, kidney stone symptoms include back pain, nausea, fever, chills, and bloody urine.

Significance

• Magnesium’s beneficial action on kidney stones is associated with its ability to increase calcium solubility. Supplementation helps both with reducing the size of existing stones and preventing the formation of new ones.

Dosage

• Some alternative medicine practitioners consider kidney stones a sign of magnesium deficiency. They recommend a daily dose of 500 milligrams of magnesium citrate to prevent formation of new stones.

Sources

• Increasing consumption of foods rich in magnesium is often recommended by herbalists to prevent the formation of stones. Rich dietary sources include brown rice, barley, quinoa, bananas, and oats.

Considerations

• Although spinach and chocolate contain considerable amounts of magnesium, they also contain oxalates. Oxalate is contraindicated in patients prone to forming calcium oxalate stones, the most common kind of kidney stones. People who have had a kidney stone of this type should avoid oxalate-containing foods as they may encourage stone formation.