In this episode of the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast Jill Harris answers two listener questions about water. We talk about the different types of water you can drink and whether it’s safe to drink our daily allotment all in one sitting.
Jeff Sarris
Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast. The show about reducing your kidney stone risk and living your best life. I’m your host and fellow student Jeff Sarris.
Jill Harris
And I’m Jill Harris, your very middle aged kidney stone prevention nurse.
And I’m sorry, if you’re watching me on YouTube. I am fanning myself because we’re doing episode after episode right now, we’re taping a lot of episodes, and I’m heating up, people. In the best way possible.
Jeff Sarris
And you’re very supportive of them. You’re their biggest fan.
I had to do that. I’m like, that’d be the worst joke right now. So I think it’s, it’s pretty fitting.
Jill Harris
I love it. I love it.
Jeff Sarris
Okay, so we have another question. We have a couple of questions. today. We are talking about water.
Here comes our first question, I believe from Monique.
Jill Harris
Okay, Monique, let’s go.
Listener Voicemail
My name is Monique. And I’m from the Sacramento area of California. And I have a question about water.
It’s been the hardest thing to increase so much water. If I forget to drink water in the first half of the day, is it okay to drink all 85 or so ounces of water on the last half of the day? Just wondering.
Thank you so much for your podcasts and everything you’re doing and all the work you’re doing. I appreciate it so much. I’ve had a difficult time with kidney stones for the last 10 years. And I just found you recently so thank you for all that you do.
Jill Harris
Are we not the luckiest people in the whole world?
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, we seriously have the best listeners. We do. If you look at YouTube, I mean, it’s not the the YouTube comments that people talk about.
Jill Harris
Yeah, supportive people.
And we love fostering a community and I love making a safe space. That’s why the Facebook group is so popular. And I really want the YouTube channel and Spotify and Apple, wherever the hell you’re listening to me, I want all of it to be a safe place for kidney stone formers. Because of all the things you’ve been through, and the lack of health, the pain that everyone always talks about. All the surgeries you’ve had to have. I think people are just very kind and appreciative to be able to get some help.
So Monique. Water.
Oh, I will have to say, when my friends were like, “You’re going to put yourself on YouTube. Do you now mean people are on YouTube?”
I’m like, first of all, I don’t really give a darn what people say about me. God bless if you’re really going to pick on the old Kidney Stone Prevention Nurse. That’s not my problem. But the other thing is is like, right, Jeff, we have just the best community ever in the whole wide world. So it’s not anything like that.
And if anybody probably said anything bad about us, a lot of people would be very mad. We wouldn’t even have to say anything. It’s happened on Facebook.
Jeff Sarris
Because, yeah, you know what you’re promoting. You have so much experience, but people have different agendas who may show up in places. So it’s really nice to have such a supportive community who’s like, “No, we know this works. Jill knows this world. We we trust her because of XYZ.”
Jill Harris
Right.
All right. So Monique, water. This is a wonderful question, Monique. And I’m sorry, you’ve been through so much. First of all, for the past 10 years. That’s much too long to be dealing with this stone disease.
Many people come to me and say, “What do you want from me Jill? I’m a teacher. I can’t drink all day long. I can’t leave my students (before COVID), I can’t leave my students in a classroom.
“So look, it doesn’t matter. It’s okay because when I get home at four o’clock, I just drink all night long.”
I’ll remind you guys, if you don’t drink between the hours of eight o’clock and four o’clock, you are dehydrated. You can’t make up for that. You can now get rehydrated starting at four o’clock. You can get rehydrated, but you cannot make up for those hours that you were not getting any water and you were dehydrated. I hope that makes sense.
Which means that urine is sitting in your body for a very long time. The crystals are not wearing masks. They’re not social distancing. They want to hang out. They want to hang out no matter what anybody says.
So that is why we want you to drink a lot of water and constantly flush everything out.
Many patients do this because of their job, their occupation, so it’s very difficult for them. And so sometimes I have to give a little tough love to those patients. And when they come see me, I’m like,
Look, you have a choice. You can talk to your people at work and say, “Look, I have a medical condition, I need to take care of it. I am going to have to leave throughout the day here and there to, you know, go to the bathroom, I have to do that.” And you’re just gonna have to do that.
So I understand, I do understand your plight. But again, because I’m always looking at outcomes for people. It’s either you figure out a way to do this now, or you’re going to have more surgeries in the future.
In my practice, a lot of people come to me. They work with me privately or in the Kidney Stone Prevention Course. And they’ve lost a kidney because of chronic kidney stones. They have CKD and now they’re getting stones. There’s a lot of things going on here. And so we don’t want to increase your risk of other diseases because of these kidney stones.
So my concern for you and I know people are like “Well, that’s kind of rough, Jill. You’re not appreciating…” I do appreciate it. I appreciate what it may entail to get more water in your body. I promise you, I do. But on my watch, I’m always going to be fast forwarding in your life, and thinking about what we really have to do to prevent new kidney stones.
And that’s going to be finding a way to get your class covered or do something. So you can urinate throughout the day.
My patients do do it. They figure it out. So that’s going to be that. The other thing, let’s talk about what beautiful Monique said. She said, so I’ve been trying to get the 80 ounces in all night long. Well, again, I’m going to think that through and say, all right, even though she didn’t say it, I know my patients often say this to me. “So I’m drinking all my fluids…”
Yeah, they all talk like that. I don’t know why I always have that voice, but I do so…
“So I’m drinking all my fluids at nighttime.” And so what I’m thinking about, Monique’s gonna float away. She isn’t going to get a good night’s sleep because she’s going to have to pee three, four times.
I’m old, I already have to get up twice, even if I didn’t drink anything. So if I’m drinking 80 ounces before bed, I’m going to be up all night.
And guess what happens the next day? First of all, it’s very difficult to go back to sleep. You can just have so many damn meditation apps, okay? They don’t always work.
Okay, so then you’re trying to get back to sleep. You’re up. You’re frustrated. You keep looking at the alarm clock. We all know how this goes.
Now you’re exhausted the next day? Why do I care about that? Number one, sleep is so very, very important. Your body needs to rest. It needs to rest. And I know in our culture, we’re like, oh, I only slept four hours. Oh, you I only slept three. Oh, I was up all night. And we wear that as a badge of courage. Is that right? Jeff? Badge of Courage?
Jeff Sarris
Like a badge of honor.
Jill Harris
Yeah, thank you. God bless him being here. People are like, “Really? You’re going to have somebody else do the show with you?” I’m like, have you met me? I need that. I need the help.
Jeff Sarris
I think it’s just a good team. You don’t need me here at all. You got this. But I think it’s good to work together.
Jill Harris
I would be lost.
Okay. So the problem is, we need our sleep. This machine has to rest. Just like we have to plug in our computer when it needs to recharge. We need to recharge.
The bigger thing when you have kidney stones, whatever you’re battling the next day: you’re a stay at home mom dealing with four kids, you’re going to work whatever you’re doing, going to work out of the home. We don’t make the best choices when we don’t get a good night’s sleep.
No one ever wakes up after getting two hours of sleep and says “Hey, Mickey, go get the beet salad. Will ya?” Nobody ever says that. You want a burrito, you want ice cream.
Nobody makes good decisions when they’re exhausted. They want comfort foods. So you can’t make good healthy lifestyle choices.
If you’re exhausted all day long, you’re going to be cranky. Nobody’s going to want to be around you. You’re just not going to function well. So please don’t save all your fluids for nighttime. I don’t have any work around with this. You’re going to have to figure out a way.
I take this as seriously as if that would be a diabetic coming to me and saying, “I can’t get my insulin shots all day.” You’re going to have to find a way.
You know, as a nurse, I hear a lot of different things concerning kidney stone stuff and kidney stuff. So you have to find a way. You just have to find a way. It’s your responsibility to stay well.
Water is also not an easy thing to do. I know every doctor will tell you, “Susie, tomorrow, you got to start drinking a gallon of water.” Susie can’t drink a gallon of water when she hasn’t had two glasses a day in her whole life. That’s not going to happen.
So, Monique, get a few glasses throughout. You know, I would say a couple glasses. If you let me use this as an example. If you have three glasses of water a day right now, that’s all you have. Next week, try four glasses a day. The next week after that five, and six and seven. Each week increase one glass per day until you get to where you need to be.
Where do I need to be Jill? Where you’re producing two and a half liters of urine or more a day. You don’t have to be producing six liters. I see urine collections all day long. And they show me six liters.
“Okay, come on Billy Bob. Is that what you really do?”
“Well, no, Jill, but I don’t want to catch what for from the doctor.”
So you don’t have to pee unnecessarily either people. You do have to live your life. So two and a half to three liters a day is what we want to come out of you.
Jeff Sarris
And I like talking about sleep too. We might do an episode purely on sleep. It’s so important. And, like you said, you can’t get up under rested and overcome your internal chemistry. I think it’s ghrelin and there are all these systems that when you don’t get enough sleep…
Jill Harris
Yeah! Ghrelin is a hormone that comes and punches you in the face as my friend coach Greg will say, he’s a YouTube fitness guy that I love, and that’s what makes us hungry. So yeah, that’s gonna be overreactive for sure.
Jeff Sarris
And you’re not going to willpower your way through that. You need the sleep to actually have a great day. So yeah, I’d love to dive into sleep in one episode.
Ok, so we have a another question about water that we will go to right now.
Listener Voicemail
Okay. This is Laureen from Moore, Oklahoma. And I have a question for Jill about water. I know the importance of drinking water to reach our goals each day. But is there any benefit from drinking a specific water or avoiding a specific water? If so, what’s the ideal water for us to drink? And what waters should we stay away from? Thank you.
Jill Harris
What’s her name, Jeff? Noreen?
Jeff Sarris
Either Noreen or Laureen. It’s hard to tell sometimes just because of the cell phone quality unfortunately.
Jill Harris
Yeah, I really do like addressing people by their name. Anyway, so what’s the best water to drink? Guess what I buy? Nothing. I get tap water Dr. Coe too.
We were always like, “Can you believe on the money people spend on on water?” You know? I just drink regular tap water. So remember, when you’re trying to hydrate yourself:
All fluids count. Water is best.
“Can I drink whiskey all day long?” No, Bobby can’t drink whiskey all day long. You can have a drink or two. That’s fine. But again, you know water is best.
Do I care if it’s Evian or Smart Water or this or that? No, I really don’t. I’m not a fan of you guys spending extra money. Unless it’s something that makes you happy. You may say, “Look, I love Smart Water. I’m using that because I drink more.” God bless. Beautiful. Go on your way dear one. Go ahead and do that. That’s fine. I don’t care about that.
What I don’t love is I don’t think you need to spend your extra nickels on higher pH stuff. First of all, they barely even raise or lower anything. That’s just marketing bull doo. Also, some of you have really high urine pH and you don’t want it to increase.
So stop buying alkaline water, please. I just think they’re marketing junk in a way to take your money away. So I’m not a believer in that I drink tap water.
But if you wanted like LaCroix bubbly water, Perrier…whatever makes you happy. I know that there have been some doctors that for certain patients because they may have CKD, chronic kidney disease, they say please don’t use carbonated water. So I’m not necessarily going to recommend carbonated water because I don’t know everyone’s medical conditions here. But I will say that any bottled water, I don’t care what you choose as long as you choose to drink enough of it to produce two and a half to three liters a day.
So have at it, but I personally don’t understand unless some people are worried about their well water. To those people I say, test it. Let’s see how much sodium is in there. So if you if you drink more from drinking things like Evian, or Smart Water or whatever those products are, please feel free to use them if that’s what makes you happy.
Dr. Coe and I, we just drink regular tap water. That’s what we do.
Jeff Sarris
If it’s convenient, and it suits your lifestyle, perfect. But yeah, I think that’s wonderful advice.
If you have any questions, whether about water or anything else, and you’d like your voicemail featured on a future episode, be sure to leave us a voicemail at 773-789-8763.
I think this was a good one. We covered a couple topics squished together, but it made sense to put them together.
And if you’re enjoying the show, be sure to subscribe wherever you’re listening. It’s on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and check it out on YouTube We’re ecstatic how the YouTube has grown. Like we’re already over a couple 1000 subscribers.
Jill Harris
I know how lucky are we? So I love YouTube, I’ve changed toilet bulb, I’ve learned how to cook. I love YouTube. So I was thrilled.
I also love Spotify, I’m a big Spotify fan. I listen to my podcasts on it. Anyway, I like all of it. But you need to just dolike I do, hit the bell button. Hit that bell thing on YouTube so you’ll be notified when the next show is up. I always like to be notified because I forget when things are happening. And also, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Because then other people can find us.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah. And subscribing and hitting the bell does help us reach more people. Like the quicker and the sooner people watch a video after it’s published, which is every Tuesday morning, the more YouTube is like “oh, people like this.”
And also comments. If you have questions about an episode or want to comment on anything. Please leave us a comment. Jill responds to everything on YouTube.
Jill Harris
I love the comments.
As a matter of fact, let’s start something right now, just thinking about it. So for these callers that called today, what have you done? You can help too. This is a community. This is what this is what we want to foster here.
So in the comments below, please write the ways that you get your water in throughout the day despite the occupation you have. And then the other thing is, what is your favorite water? What did you do to make yourself drink more water?
Help other people, please. The community is very good, especially on the Facebook page. I want the same thing on YouTube. Help each other so other people can understand that they’re not alone in this disease. And that there are other people struggling too.
You can help other people that are trying to increase their water. What ways helped you? And if you have an occupation that it’s been difficult to work around, what did you do to make it less of an obstacle to get your water in during the day?
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, I think that’s wonderful. We’d love to have more dialogue in the comments. Everyone can help. Everyone has their own experience and can contribute their approach to the topic.
I like it. So again, thanks for listening. And be sure to subscribe, wherever you’re listening right now, and we will see you next time.
Jill Harris
Thank you so much. What a wonderful show. I loved this one. I loved having a two for one.
Bye everybody.
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