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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday October 01 2016, @04:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the hands-up-and-scream-(in-pain) dept.

Riding a roller coaster may help patients to break up and pass kidney stones:

When you're trying to pass a kidney stone, you're probably not thinking, in your cloud of agony, "Darn it! I should have ridden a roller coaster." And yet a new study suggests doing just that. According to research published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association [open, DOI: 10.7556/jaoa.2016.128] [DX], the bump and jolt of a roller coaster may actually help bump and jolt small kidney stones right through your system.

Dr. David Wartinger is one of the researchers who led the study, which involved bringing a silicone model packed with kidney stones and urine on Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride. Yes, it is as fascinating as it sounds. Wartinger, an osteopathic urological surgeon and professor at Michigan State University, said he got the idea from a patient who said he passed three kidney stones while riding the Orlando coaster. "It's hard to ignore that kind of a story, no matter how much of a cynic you are," Wartinger said. To be fair, you can't pin this one on Disney magic. "We have been hearing stories for years from people who went on vacation, gone to amusement parks, and ended up passing a kidney stone," he said.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 01 2016, @05:11PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 01 2016, @05:11PM (#408827) Journal

    Five years of sea duty. A fair portion of it was in rough seas. One of my shipmates had kidney stones, and the weather was to damned rough to send a chopper over from the carrier. No medevac, buddy, just suffer. I sat up nights with him, for four nights. Those stones weren't passing, and the rough seas only made the man more miserable than he already was. Finally, the weather got good enough to do a medevac, they took the man to a real doctor aboard the carrier. Later, he told us that just getting aboard the carrier where he wasn't being hammered constantly was a major relief. Proper drugs didn't hurt him any, either. He finally passed the stones, and we got him back 7 or 8 days after he left.

    Maybe that roller coaster might help SOME people, but I'm not putting any money on it.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday October 01 2016, @06:05PM

    by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Saturday October 01 2016, @06:05PM (#408844)

    Never been at sea, but I suspect that most roller coasters experience higher G forces (in loops mainly).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:57AM (#408965)

    After the carrier, he had to be put in a fighter and properly shaken.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 02 2016, @05:21AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 02 2016, @05:21AM (#408987) Journal

      Ya know - that idea can be scary to a destroyerman. Airedales are a different subspecies of man from us. I guess most of us would survive a fighter jock showing off, but not all destroyermen are equally suited to life in the air. There's a reason why we all migrate to one branch of the service or another - we also migrate to communities within the services. Destroyermen and bubbleheads are more interchangeable than destroyermen and airedales.