ATHENS, Ga – According to Urologist Dr. Thomas H. Oliver, old Southerners had it right when it came to drinking lots of lemonade.

"Lemonade has a lot of citrate," says Dr. Oliver, "a substance which inhibits the formation of kidney stones."

When his patients are buying prepared lemonade, the urologist tells them to look for the brands highest in citrates.

One of Dr. Oliver’s patients, Woody Bruce, agrees. Having had kidney stones since 1965, Bruce says the office first mentioned trying lemonade to him a couple of years ago.

"It sounded reasonable, and I love lemonade, and as far as I can tell, it works very well," he reports.

"Some of us are simply not going to be stone free. When we have them, we have them," says Bruce, who describes his very first stone as being as big as a baseball and before the days of lithotripsy. Although he has had every type of procedure for the treatment of kidney stones, he credits Dr. Oliver and his staff as exceptional in the way they work together to achieve the goal of being relatively stone free.

"Every time some new idea comes up, we are going to give it a try and see how it works. Such was the case with the lemonade," he said.

Bruce, who reports that his stones have been softer since his treatment with Dr. Oliver, takes three medicines, but basically eats whatever he wants and drinks a lot of water.

Dr. Oliver says diet does play a part in the production of kidney stones. As an example, Dr. Oliver cites tea as a bad oxalate, a molecule that links up with calcium and then crystallizes under some conditions.

"The worse thing you can do is to be dehydrated, drink lots of tea, eat lots of meat and be sweaty. You really have to protect your kidneys," says Dr. Oliver. It’s also a myth that Cokes cause kidney stones, he says.

Treatment for kidney stones has dramatically evolved since Bruce had his first kidney stone in 1965, says Oliver, who reports that many of the procedures, including lithotripsy, can today be handled in Athena Urology’s accredited surgery center. The outpatient procedures are convenient, he says, with recuperation minimal.

"We not only treat the stones, but find out why they occur," says Dr. Oliver. "For example, in Bruce’s case we found that he had two different problems. One was related to high uric acid; the other, elevated uric calcium. It’s not rare to have either one. Once we proved with a 24 hour urine test what the problem was, we began treatment which cleared out the kidneys. When the body is putting out too much calcium in the kidney, it makes stones. What you do is take a simple medicine that puts out salt and puts the calcium back in, a diuretic. All the more reason you need to be drinking fluid to be replacing it," says Dr. Oliver.

While Woody Bruce’s life is not totally stone free, he has a stone about every two years instead of every two weeks, says Oliver.

Drink that lemonade!

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Dr. Oliver is certified by the American Board of Urology and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Oliver and Dr. John Blankenship own Athena Urology in Athens and also have offices in Winder at the Barrow Regional Medical Office Building and in Royston at the Royston Diagnostics Center. Dr. Oliver is on the medical staff of Athena Urology Surgery Center, Athens Regional Medical Center, St. Mary’s Hospital, Barrow Regional Medical Center and Walton Medical Center.

Athena Urology offers a full range of urological services to both men and women and some children. Treatment provided by Drs. Oliver and Blankenship includes kidney stones, prostate disease and incontinence, among others. The practice serves patients in more than 15 Northeast Georgia counties.

The urological practice of Drs. Oliver and Blankenship, Athena Urology, was awarded a three-year accreditation for its surgical center by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, Inc., and its CT Scanner was the first in Athens accredited by the American College of Radiology.