Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Batmanning for health?

You may be familiar with the internet phenomenon "planking" where people take strange pictures of themselves acting like planks. Well, someone got the bright idea to up the ante and they called it "Batmanning": hanging by your feet like you're a bat. My doctors have now prescribed this for my kidney stones. However, I don't have to go to strange places and take pictures of it, but they want me hanging upside-down! Apparently I haven't been doing enough head-stands in my workout... Why they didn't cover that in grade school P.E., I don't know. I think I should write my congressman.

All kidding aside, they really do want me to do upside-down exercises. Here's an illustration of a kidney. The tube that enters the kidney is the ureter. It divides into branches, and two of them you'll notice point downwards. That's where my kidney stones like to form, just like this poor fellow in the picture. And like babies, kidney stones like to move around, flip over, and all sorts of other fun stuff, which in turn causes pain. They are far from smooth, like the one pictured here. No... these stones are sharp little buggers.

My kidney stones are calcium oxalate. But their either di- or mono- and we're not sure which. Since they've now been pulverized into itty-bitty pieces, I can safely pass them without pain, we can collect them, have them looked at in the lab, and then see if there's anything we can do to keep this from happening again. Below is a picture of a calcium oxalate stone. This one is 20mm wide (2 cm). I had two that were 7mm each. Larger than 5mm and the body can't pass them on its own.


How would you like one of these inside of you?

I'm supposed to drink a liter of water, wait a half an hour, hang upside-down for 30 minutes, three times a day. I have trouble remembering how to eat three times a day! So I'm going to rig my bed to be at a slant (another option), but that runs the risk of causing a headache in my sleep. Sometimes there are no good choices, only choices. lol

So more home medical care, including one crazy internet fad, keep up with my water with a dash of lemon (for the electrolytes), and back to the doctor once the analysis is done. The GOOD news is, all the other stuff I was putting on hole (botox for my migraines, a new health shake) I'm now free to get back to. I've decided to put a positive spin on this whole thing by declaring: "I'm magical! I can make rocks with my body!!!" lol

Make it look awesome, baby... make it look awesome. :^D

[Edited to add] No I don't think it helped. The main thing anyone needs to do is drink lots of pro-kidney beverages.

2 comments:

  1. so did this help your stone? I ended up upside down one time when I had a stone and it seemed to unblock my ureter. but it was just a theory. I feel another one coming and am thinking of trying it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. so did this help your stone? I ended up upside down one time when I had a stone and it seemed to unblock my ureter. but it was just a theory. I feel another one coming and am thinking of trying it.

    ReplyDelete