Comprehensive Homeopathic Approach to Renal Calculi: Understanding Causes, Types, Symptoms, and Natural Treatments for Kidney Stones

Homeopathic Treatment of Renal Calculi

Renal Calculus (Plural Calculi):

Calculus, often called stone, is a concretion of material like mineral salts that forms in the kidney or kidney duct. The formation of stones is also known as lithiasis.

Causes of Renal Calculi or Stones:

1. Dietary factors:
   • Diet rich in red meat, fish, eggs can cause aciduria
   • Diet high in calcium (tomatoes, milk, spinach, rhubarb)
   • Diet lacking Vitamin A causes desquamation of renal epithelium which precipitates calcium and forms stones
   • Low water intake with high protein and salt consumption
2. Hot climates increase concentration of solutes, resulting in calcium precipitation and formation of calcium oxalate stones
3. Infections like recurrent UTI
4. Hyperparathyroidism increases serum calcium levels resulting in hypercalcinosis and pelvic stones, causing increased uric acid levels and multiple uric acid stones
5. In paralytic patients, secretion of large amounts of calcium in urine results in calcium oxalate stones
6. Inadequate urinary drainage in conditions like horseshoe kidney or unascended kidney makes patients more vulnerable to stone development due to urine stasis
7. Decreased urinary citrate
8. Family history of kidney stones and being overweight

Types of Renal Calculi or Stones:

1. Calcium oxalate stones: Most common type. Hard, single stones with sharp projections. Sometimes produce hematuria and are visible in plain X-ray KUB.
2. Uric acid stones: Second most common type. Multiple small, hexagonal faceted, yellow-colored stones. Not visible in plain X-ray. Common in patients who consume red meat.
3. Phosphate stones: Smooth and round, commonly occurring in the renal pelvis and tend to grow in alkaline urine. They produce recurrent urinary tract infections and hematuria, slowly damaging renal parenchyma.
4. Cystine stones: Occur in young girls at puberty and in inborn errors of cystinuria due to decreased absorption of cystine from renal tubules. Hard and radiopaque due to sulfur content.

Signs and Symptoms:

• Renal pain: Ranges from dull aching to pricking pain posteriorly at the renal angle (formed by sacrospinalis and 12th rib). Sometimes felt anteriorly at the costal margin. Nausea and vomiting occur due to intense sympathetic stimulation caused by stretching of the renal capsule, mediated by the celiac plexus.
• Ureteric colic: When the stone is lodged at the PV Junction (pelviureteric) or anywhere in the ureter, it causes severe colicky pain originating in the groin region and radiating to the groin, testicles, vulva, and medial side of the thigh. There’s also referred pain due to irritation of the genitofemoral nerve.
• Hematuria: Common with renal stones, especially oxalate stones. Blood loss is small but fresh red in urine.
• Recurrent UTI: Fever with chills, burning during urination, pyuria, increased frequency of urination. Stiffness in back and abdominal muscles during severe pain attacks. Complaints may include nausea and vomiting. Dark yellow urine.

Complications:

• Hydronephrosis due to back pressure from calculi in the ureter, producing renal enlargement
• Calculous pyonephrosis due to recurrent infection
• Renal failure in some cases due to uremia

Investigations:

1. Plain X-ray KUB
2. Blood urea and creatinine to rule out renal failure
3. USG to determine stone size and exact location
4. Urine culture
5. IVP (intravenous pyelogram) to locate the stone exactly in relation to kidney and ureter and to assess renal function

Conservative Treatment:

Small stones less than 5mm in size can pass with intake of copious amounts of fluid and intravenous hydration.

Homeopathic Medicines for Renal Calculi:

1. Benzoicum Acidum:

Left-sided renal colic pain (cutting and burning type), worse when stooping in the kidney region. Inflammation and weakness of bladder and kidney. Offensive urine with horse-like smell, strong and intensely urinous. Changeable urine color: brown, reddish dark with red brick dust sediment.

2. Berberis Vulgaris:

Complaints generally on both sides of kidney region but more indicated for left side. Burning pain with sensation as if some urine remained after urination. Urine with thick mucus and bright-red, mealy sediment. Urine becomes cloudy soon after passing and standing; sediments clay-colored, cloudy, flocculent, gelatinous, gray-white.

Bubbling, sore, bruised feeling with numbness in kidney region extending to thighs. Cutting, aching, burning, cramping pain in kidney region, extending to testicles, urethra, and thighs (in women, toward vulva). Pain generally increases with movement. Pain in thighs and loins when urinating. Frequent urination; burning in urethra when not urinating. Urethral pain is cutting, tearing, stitching after urination.

3. Calcarea Carbonica:

Dark, brown, cloudy urine upon standing. Offensive, putrid, sourish, strong-smelling urine. Sediments include sand, gravel, small calculi, and white sediment.

Urethral soreness, cutting, and burning before, during, and after urination. Frequent urination at night with sudden urging when busy; patient must run to pass urine but only a few drops come out.

4. Cantharis Vesicatoria:

Intolerable urging to urinate; constant, frequent, ineffectual desire triggered by seeing running water, after urination, or while walking. Nephritis with bloody urine. Violent paroxysms of cutting and burning in the entire kidney region with painful urging to urinate; bloody urine passed by drops. Intolerable tenesmus with cutting, burning before, during, and after urination.

Urine scalds and passes drop by drop, sometimes involuntarily. Membranous scales looking like bran in water. Jelly-like, shreddy urine. Bladder pain worse from drinking and during/after urination; pain is burning, cutting, dragging, stitching, and tender, extending through kidneys and urethra.

Urination so painful that patient dances around the room in agony. Left-sided kidney pain worse during motion. Pain is cutting, burning, and paroxysmal. Urethral burning pain with urging to urinate, worse before, during, and after urination. Urine is burning hot, scanty, cloudy, black, dark red. Sediments are bloody, flocculent, red granular, cell debris, white-gray, mealy, with renal calculi and sand.

5. Lithium Carbonicum:

Bladder pain during urination extending to spermatic cord; pain in right kidney and ureter. Turbid urine with mucus, scanty and dark fiery red, acrid; sandy deposits, gravels, small calculi. Urethral burning pain during urination; frequent urination at night. Pressure in heart while urinating. Helpful for subacute and chronic cystitis.

6. Lycopodium Clavatum:

More indicated for right-sided kidney stones. Bladder inflammation with heaviness and burning pain after urination. Pain can be cutting, dragging, pressing, especially while lying down at night; improved by horseback riding. Back pain improves after urination.

Frequent urging to urinate, especially at night while lying down. Must wait for urine to start and can only pass urine when alone. Kidney region pain before urination that stops after urination. Kidney pain is stitching, stinging, sticking, extending to right ureter more than left.

Urine is profuse, increased at night, more than the amount drunk. Urine can be bloody with clots, burning hot, cloudy soon after passing. Color is dark brown, fiery red, frothy, milky, muddy with acrid, pungent, offensive, strong odor. Sediments are red, cloudy, crystalline, brick-red, bright, pepper-like, with sand, gravels, and renal calculi.

7. Sarsaparilla Officinalis:

Mostly indicated for right-sided kidney stones. Kidney pain before urination (worse), extending downward to the bladder (neuralgic type). Severe urethral pain at the end of urination or with the last drop causing violent burning that persists after urination. Urging to urinate upon waking, frequent at night, often ineffectual.

Infants scream before and while passing urine; helpful for renal colic and dysuria in children. Urine dribbles while sitting but passes freely when standing. Must wait to start urination while standing (can only pass urine when standing), and stream is thin and feeble.

Urine is scanty, slimy, flaky, sandy, bloody, with gravel and small calculi. Sediments are clay-colored, cheesy, chalk-like or floury, crusty, flocculent, mucous, purulent. Urine is burning hot, cloudy when passed and while standing. Color is pale, fiery red-yellow, bright, light, sometimes colorless.

8. Sepia Officinalis:

Sensation of stone in bladder with pressing pressure in morning and evening, improved by sitting (compelled to sit with crossed legs). Constant desire to urinate, frequent at night. Feeble, slow, weak urine stream. Must wait a long time to start urination, needs to press on bladder.

Involuntary urination at night, bed-wetting. Dreaming of urination during first sleep, difficult to wake children (common in children generally but also in stone conditions).

Urine is cloudy; color can be dark brown, clay-like loam water, dark pale and red, golden yellow, or colorless. Urine smells sourish, strong, offensive, acrid, and pungent. Sediments include red and white adhesive (white firmly adhering and hard to wash off), sand, gravels, and renal calculi.

9. Pareira Brava:

Constant urging and great straining to urinate, with pain down thighs during efforts to urinate. Shrieking, screaming, shouting during urination. Cutting kidney pain down the ureter. Can only pass urine when on knees, pressing head firmly against the floor.

Left-side colic worse when lying down, better when on knees and elbows. Feeling of bladder being distended with neuralgic pain in anterior crural region. Dribbling after urination. Violent pain in glans penis, inflammation of urethra.

10. Ocimum Canum:

Especially indicated for kidney stones in the ureter associated with nausea, vomiting, and intolerable pain. Shows remarkable results for right-sided kidney stones. Urine has high acidity with formation of spike crystals of uric acid. Urine is turbid, thick, purulent, bloody; brick-dust red or yellow. Urine smells of musk. Pain in ureter and cramps in kidney.

11. Tabacum:

Indicated for left-sided kidney stones with nausea and vomiting triggered by the slightest motion. Helps patients who pass red or saffron-colored urine and experience tenesmus and burning pain in the bladder.

12. Medorrhinum:

Painful tenesmus when urinating, nocturnal enuresis, renal colic. Urine flows very slowly.

13. Hydrangea Arborescens:

For renal calculi, especially affecting the left-side ureter with lumbar pain. Burning in urethra and frequent desire to urinate. Urine hard to start. Heavy mucus deposits. Sharp pain in loins, especially left. Great thirst with abdominal symptoms.

Note:

• Right-side kidney stone medicines: Lycopodium, Nux vomica, Ocimum canum, Sarsaparilla
• Left-sided kidney stone medicines: Berberis vulgaris, Cantharis, Pareira brava, Tabacum
• Colocynthis 200 is often used for renal colic pain and bladder tenesmus. Best results when taken three times daily for 7 days.
• Mother tinctures available for Pareira brava, Cantharis, Berberis vulgaris, Hydrangea, and Ocimum canum are commonly used for best results.