A roller-coast ride could shake those kidney stones right out of you

EXPERIMENT CLAIMS TOP IG NOBEL PRIZE FOR MEDICINE.

While it’s not quite the Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel awards are spoof prizes published in the Annals of Improbable Research. Despite that, one doctor has proven that riding a roller coaster – especially one that moves up and down, and side to side more – can “rattle” kidney stones right out of the urinary tract. A patient of Prof David Wartinger at Michigan State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine returned from a holiday trip to Walt Disney World in Florida claiming that the roller-coaster there dislodged his kidney stone. To make sure it wasn’t a coincidence, the patient went on the ride repeatedly, with a stone getting dislodged each time. So Prof Wartinger constructed a replica of the patient’s urinary tract – stones and all – and took it on the same ride, to discover his patient was right.