Although I didn’t believe, if you have kidney stones it is possible that a visit to a roller coaster can end your problem.
It sounds curious or perhaps ridiculous to some, but research has shown that visiting a specific roller coaster can end the problems associated with kidney stones.
The study is based on the experience of a patient in the United States who, after some adrenaline rides on a roller coaster, expelled the stones from his body.
This caught the attention of two urologists who began research to understand how a roller coaster could solve a problem that is often painful and sometimes could lead to surgery.
Undoubtedly, a success that caught the attention of the scientific world in 2016, considering that an experience that for many is rather pleasant could solve a medical problem.
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad | Disney
Get on a roller coaster and goodbye kidney stones?
Kidney stones are a common disease, they are stones lodged in the kidney that arise through the crystallization of salts and minerals that are present in the urine, reported Muy Interesante.
These stones can cause pain so great that it is often compared to the pain women feel during childbirth.
They can leave the body through urine, but when they are large, surgery is the solution for these problems.
So when one of urologist David Wartinger’s patients visited him and told him about his experience visiting one of the Disney parks, it caught his attention and he decided to study the subject.
As he told DW, his patient told him that in the middle of his tour of the park he went on a roller coaster and something incredible happened.
It was the roller coaster “Big Thunder Mountain” of the Magic Kingdom park, located in Orlando, United States. After the first ride on the roller coaster, after a few minutes the patient expelled one of the kidney stones that was lodged in his body.
For the same reason, he did not hesitate to do the tour two more times on the roller coaster. By the time he finished the third trip, he had expelled all the kidney stones from his body.
Angie | Pexels
Nati | pixels
Wartinger pointed out that the jolts and movements of the roller coaster caused the patient’s kidney deposits to break loose, so he eliminated them through urine.
Although the idea of passing a kidney stone via a roller coaster ride sounds ridiculous, Wartinger teamed up with his colleague Marc Mitchell and began to investigate whether this could be real.
Have surgery or tour Big Thunder Mountain at Disney
Doctors immediately began investigating the power of roller coasters and visited various amusement parks, always aware that the initial finding was made on the “Big Thunder Mountain” from Disney.
In order to test their hypothesis, the doctors created a 3D-printed silicone kidney model, based on the kidney of the patient who had undergone this incredible experience. Then, they clogged it with kidney stone-like crumbs and urine.
“Our model duplicates the interior spaces in the human kidney, which is about the size of a fist and has passageways like the branches of a tree. In those passages is where the stones are formed” indicated the urologist who devised the investigation.
In this way they went to the Disney roller coaster and began their experiment with the kidney model.
@whywedisney | Instagram
Wartinger commented “The first ten trips were so much fun” adding “But in the next 20 years we already felt like we had been in a car accident”.
In total they made 360 roller coaster rides with the model, but not only on the “Big Thunder” roller coaster, but also visited Space Mountain or Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster.
The results were unexpected, but they verified that what the patient indicated was real.
Kidney stones are effectively removed
Research that led doctors to enjoy Orlando’s roller coasters was successful and was published in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association .
Here they detailed that 64% of the trips that were made at the last end of the train were successful and the “stones” of the kidney in 3D were removed.
While it only happened in 16% of the cases when the crew members sat in the first places of the train, reported Infobae
However, this only occurs on the roller coaster “Big Thunder Mountain Railroad” from Disney. According to the researcher “It is not one of the most exciting, it only gets 3 out of 5 possible points on a roller coaster scale,” explains the scientist. But what he tells is that it goes up and down constantly and moves a lot from left to right. It’s like stumbling around”
This would favor small stones found in the kidney, specifying that only kidney stones up to 5 millimeters could disappear. For cases with larger stones, surgery is necessary.
IgNobel: medicine prize
The research was curious and did not go unnoticed by the IgNobel prizes, an award that rewards the 10 scientific discoveries of the year that “make the first laugh and then think”.
It is organized by the journal “Annals of Improbable Research” and they are presented at a ceremony held at Harvard University where the unusual is honored, but which stimulates interest in science, technology and medicine.
It was precisely the IG Nobel Prize in Medicine that was awarded to this research in October 2018.
After the award, David Wartinger presented his research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT), in Cambridge, USA, but failed to conduct a clinical study on its discovery.
As reported to DW, he attempted to visit parks with an experimental group and ultrasound equipment. “I contacted as many theme parks as possible, but they all kindly rejected the idea”
So he can only recommend that patients who can visit a park and have this ailment, do a visit the roller coaster, at least he would not stop trying when they are relatively small stones.
Although he does believe that in the event of being larger, medical treatment is required to ensure surgical intervention to solve the health problem.