Global Warming and Kidney Stones

I have never had a kidney stone, but I've had babies.

It hurts.

I think that common comparison of kidney stone pain to childbirth pain is lame. Some men I know brag about their kidney stone stories, saying having a baby isn't as difficult as passing a kidney stone.

BS.

With kidney stones, medications are prescribed to ease the pain. Have you heard about the importance of having a "natural" kidney stone experience?

When it comes to an isolated labor pain and a painful jolt from a kidney stone, there may be a similarity. But the entire process of labor, delivery, and recovery being similar to a kidney stone? No way. It's apples and oranges.

Expect the kidney stone/childbirth debate to heat up.

Oh, yes. Global warming is doing more than causing glaciers to melt and the polar ice caps to shrink. It may be causing kidney stones to grow at an alarming increase!

HELP, AL GORE! HELP!

Study: Global Warming May Cause Increased Kidney Stones

As global warming heats up temperatures around the United States, it will likely cause a painful sensation on some sensitive human areas, The Globe and Mail reported Tuesday.

Temperatures warming over the next 42 years will cause a 30 percent jump in nephrolithiasis, or kidney stones, especially in hotter regions of the country, said scientists at the University of Texas.

"This will come and get you in your home," said Dr. Tom Brikowski, lead researcher and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "It will make life just uncomfortable enough that maybe people will slow down and think what they're doing to the climate."

And, as temperatures increase, so does the risk for dehydration in humans, which can form solid, painful plugs in the bladder and kidneys.

Experts are not completely sure of the connection between global warming and kidney stones, but they are not surprised.

That's right.

A kidney stone will wake people up to the horrors of global warming. That will get them to think about their carbon footprints.

As usual when it comes to things blamed on global warming, "Experts are not completely sure of the connection between global warming and kidney stones, but they are not surprised."

These experts don't have much expertise if they're making claims without being able to scientifically illustrate the connection.

Here's a way to counter the coming kidney stone epidemic caused by dehydration:

DRINK.