Kidney stone crystals.Kris Loves Chocolate asks: "Could there be any truth to drinking pickle juice to dissolve a kidney stone? "
First let me say that I am a food chemist, not a pharmacist. By rights, I have no right to answer medical questions and any answer is based more on logic than medical knowledge.
Now, having said that, let me say this:
Kidney stones are things that have deposited, crystallised, from your urine. There are several types of kidney stones, so no one thing will cure them all.
For something like pickle juice, basically vinegar, to dissolve them it would need to get past your stomach and intestinal system and have an influence on the composition of your urine. Not impossible, by all accounts something in cranberries makes the passage and has a remedial effect with regard to urinary tract infections. But I am not convinced that acetic acid, the acid in pickle juice, will do that. Most body fluids are pretty tightly controlled for their pH.
More plausible is that drinking more fluids may lower the concentration of the salts in the urine that lead to the stones and then they may redissolve.
May.
I see no reason why pickle juice cannot be this fluid but water would be more palatable.
For more informed information, visit the Mayo Clinic site.
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