Kidney stones will affect 1 in 10 Americans at some point, according to the National Kidney Foundation, and recent studies show the numbers are rising. According to the National Institutes of Health, kidney stones are responsible for 1.3 million visits to the emergency room each year.

Kidney stones can be prevented by simply drinking water, says a new review of nine studies by the Mayo Clinic, which found that people who drank eight to ten 8-ounce glasses of water every day were 50 percent less likely to get kidney stones.

"We've known for years that drinking fluids lowers the risk of kidney stones, but this new analysis, which included more than 273,000 people, found that a lot of fluids cut the risk in half," said best-selling author Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, author of Real Cause, Real Cure.

"Kidneys are your body's filters," Dr. Teitelbaum tells Newsmax Health. "They pull toxins and other substances out of your blood for disposal in the urine. But when some of the substances become too concentrated, they can form stones. It's just like adding sugar to water. If you add too much sugar, it'll start to crystalize.

"It's the same with urine — water keeps the urine diluted, making it less likely that calcium and oxalate, the two compounds that form most stones, will crystallize."

Kidney stones are small, hard mineral deposits that form inside your kidneys, and they can cause excruciating pain when they move from the kidney to the ureter, which runs from the kidneys to the bladder. Many stones are small — several millimeters in size — and while painful, can be flushed from the body by drinking fluids.

Larger stones are dissolved by lithotripsy (shock waves) and then flushed from the body, or by ureteroscopy, in which an instrument is fed into the urethra through the bladder and then either removes or breaks stones into smaller pieces with a laser, and then removes them from the body.

"If you've had a kidney stone, you have a 50 percent risk of having another within five years," he says. "But there are two supplements that, when taken together, drastically cut the risk of a second kidney stone.

"200 milligrams of magnesium daily along with 25 milligrams of vitamin B6 decreased the recurrence of calcium-based kidney stones — which most are — by an amazing 90 percent."

There are other ways to lower your risk of kidney stones, and they're also good for your overall health, says Dr. Teitelbaum:

• Reduce fructose. A Harvard study found that people who ingested the most fructose, which is the form of sugar commonly found in soft drinks and other foods containing high-fructose corn syrup — had the highest risk of kidney stones.

• Eat more whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds. "These foods are rich in phytate, a plant compound that Harvard researchers found lowered the risk of kidney stones as much as 37 percent."

• Watch your weight. Harvard researchers found that obese men increased their risk of kidney stones by 33 percent when compared to men of normal weight. Obesity doubled the risk of kidney stones for women.

• Make lemonade. "You might want to add some lemon just to your water," says Dr. Teitelbaum. "Lemons contain citrate, which inhibits the formation of stones." Researchers at Duke University found that when people with chronic kidney stones added lemons to their diets, their average rate of stone formation dropped from one stone per year to 0.13.

"Kidney pain is the worst pain in the entire world, but you don't have to suffer from it," he said. "An ounce of prevention will prevent a ton of pain."