There are so many things I would expect to read in the morning when I’m looking at the news. This was definitely not one of those things, but here we are.
If you’ve ever had a kidney stone, you know just how painful and obnoxious they can be. Removing them with surgery can cost thousands of dollars.
Passing them can take forever and are intensely painful.
So instead of removing kidney stones through a costly surgery, you can cut your cost by thousands. All you need to do is buy a ticket to the nearest theme park.
A Michigan State University urologist found that riding a rough roller coaster with some twists and turns had an almost 70% success rate at having stones pass, especially if you sit in the last car.
Coasters with loops, upside down or inverted movements, and too high of a speed may not be much help. Sitting in the front of the roller coaster also reduces the efficiency of this hack.
The urologist, David Wartinger, heard a similar story from patients and students: they had ridden a roller coaster, and passed a stone. Each time they rode, another stone passed.
That’s when he decided he needed to test this himself, using the exact ride one of his students described to pass 3 stones. Could rollercoasters really work as kidney stone therapy?
Wartinger tested this by filling a 3D-printed kidney with a patient’s urine, then placed 3 kidney stones of various sizes in the pathways of the kidney.
They sealed it off, put it in a backpack, and went to Disney World, riding Thunder Mountain Railroad 20 times.
Needless to say, it worked, and the scientists were all probably dizzy by the end of it. After a few trials, they had promising results.
So, if you find out you have a kidney stone, get over to your favorite theme park. It’s a way more fun way of passing a stone than any other way I’ve heard of.