In recent weeks, a video has gone viral on TikTok and Instagram in which the final solution to eliminate annoying kidney stones is delivered: ride a roller coaster.
The research dates back to 2018, when urologist David Wartinger discovered that his patient with kidney stones had lost them at any moment after riding a roller coaster, without the need for medical procedures, including:
- Giving an alpha-blocker medication that relaxes the muscles of the ureter and helps you pass the stone faster and with less pain.
- Shock wave lithotripsy.
- Percutaneous nephrolithotomy, surgery.
- Cistoscopia y ureteroscopia.
The secret: roller coasters
Impressed by this story, the urologist recreated a silicone model of this patient’s kidney, he clogged it with stones similar to kidney stones and filled it with urine.
After climbing Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain -in Orlando-, he discovered that the sudden movements allowed the removal of a stone. In our country, the similar game is the Mining Train located in Fantasyland.
On September 13, 2018, the research was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine, aimed at scientific discoveries that “first make you laugh and then think.”
This means that For each roller coaster ride, you lose a kidney stone.
But the emphatic expert in determining that not all roller coasters work: they have to be the ones that are constantly going up and down, as well as moving abruptly from left to right. Even the place where you are sitting is essential for its elimination.
After 360 trips with their kidney model, Wartinger and his team discovered that “you have to sit well back, in the last wagon of the roller coaster. That is more effective than getting rid of the stones.”
Nowadays Wartinger is retired and as detailed DWhe was unable to test his research with real humans, since when communicating with various theme parks, they declined the proposal.