A high school student in southern Vietnam has successfully created a medicinal tea from grapefruit seeds and honey which can remove kidney stones.

Duong Quoc Trung, an 11^th grader from Nguyen Thien Thanh High School in Tra Vinh Province, was awarded the top prize in a science contest held by the province for this creation.

The idea came when Trung saw his uncle suffering pain caused by kidney stones.

“My Uncle Bay had 3mm kidney stones,” Trung said. “He took many medicines but the situation didn’t get better. The illness tortured him so I wanted to do something to help him.”

After getting more information about the illness from his mother, Nguyen Thi Nghiep, a general medicine doctor of the Tra Vinh General Hospital, he decided to do something about it.

Trung took two hours every day for one year to research his remedy, from June 2014 to June 2015.

Starting by reading documents about the illness, Trung found that grapefruit contains d-limonene, a compound which not only prevents kidney stones from forming, but also dissolves them.

He then told his uncle to eat the fruit for three months, however it did not work.

Trung then surfed the Internet and later found that grapefruit seeds contain pectin which dissolves kidney stones, and is also a diuretic.

He decided to blend the seeds into a powder and use them as a medicinal tea.

Finally, the remedy worked, the uncle’s situation got better with less pain, although he did get high blood pressure because he lost dietary elements due to the increased urination.

Because necessity is the mother of invention, Trung continued to work and soon found that honey could supply the lost dietary elements.

So every day Trung asked his uncle to drink two small packs of his mix of grapefruit seed powder and honey.

“After 15 days, my uncle took an ultrasound at the hospital and there was no longer any stone in his kidneys,” Trung recalled. “I was happy to the point of tears.”

According to Trung, the hardest part was working on the ratio between the powder and honey because the remedy only worked at the correct ratio.

Nguyen Van Nga, Trung’s uncle, said that he first doubted Trung when he said his remedy would cure his illness because he went to many hospitals and felt hopeless while Trung was just a high school student.

“But I decided to try it because it’s a natural fruit, not a chemical,” Ngan added. “After 10 days, I had no back pain and urination was not as painful as before, so I began to believe that I was recovering when I saw the ultrasound,” Nga said.

One year, 20 patients

After the story of Trung’s remedy spread, many people have asked him for it.

Trung welcomes all, with his only requirement being that patients show hospital papers confirming their stones and take an ultrasound two or three weeks after beginning treatment using his remedy.

“The hospital told me to take a laparoscopy, but I asked Trung for his tea when I heard about it because it’s made of natural ingredients, so if it can’t cure my illness, it’s not harmful anyway,” Pha Dat Buu, a patient with a 6mm stone in his right kidney, said.

“After 20 days, symptoms like painful urination were gone and there was no stone when I checked it with the ultrasound,” he added. “I feel so grateful to Trung.”

In response, Trung said his biggest happiness is seeing the smile of patients once they take the ultrasound and discover no stones in their body.

Over the past year, more than 20 patients with stones in their kidneys, ureter, urinary bladder, and gallbladder have used Trung’s remedy for their illness, with 15 of them having their stones completely dissolve and five others having the stones decrease in size.

Dang Van Ngoi, vice principal of Nguyen Thien Thanh High School, said Trung’s work is being sent to a science contest at national level.

According to Ngoi, Trung’s remedy is not only helpful for patients but also has economic benefits since grapefruit seeds are easy to buy at a low price.

“Using this kind of medicinal tea to cure the illness is much less expensive than medical therapy as well as surgery to remove the stones,” he said.

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