Fact or Fiction: Vegan diets cause kidney stones

This week on the show, we are doing another fact or fiction episode. Is it fact or fiction that vegan diets cause kidney stones?

The following is designed to entertain and inform, not provide medical advice. Always consult your doctor before starting any treatment.

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, fellow student, Jeff Sarris.

And I'm Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse. And Vince here too, on my left. If you're watching YouTube, you know that.

If you're on Spotify, Apple, or wherever the heck you're listening, you may not. Now, let me tell you this. This does not– this will make nobody say, "God, I love Jill." I don't care.

I'm just telling you what the truth is. So, the other day, I was kissing his head, and I was like, "Oh, my god! What's sticky on you?" And there was toothpaste in his head, and I have not trained him to start brushing his teeth on his own.

He's smart, but he's not that smart. So, I must have kissed him, and people are like, "Why aren't you dating?" Here's why, folks. I must have kissed him with toothpaste on my face, and now he had it all in his head.

And so, I'm just saying. I'm not saying it's attractive, I'm just saying what really goes on here behind the scenes at Kidney Stone Diet.

Yeah, you just keep him fresh. That's all.

His head is minty fresh.

But, yeah, he's been so just– I don't know, so quiet, letting you do your thing all day. This is the last episode of recording in this batch. And, yeah, until he just jumped off the sofa, you wouldn't even know.

Wouldn't even know he was there.

I love him.

Yeah. So, this week, we have another fact or fiction. So, the question is, do vegan diets cause kidney stones?

Okay. You go down. So, I have my Portion Not Perfection t-shirt on for this because this is one of the Kidney Stone Diet mantras.

It's always going to be about portion size, right? So, people will say, "Well, Jill, I'm a vegan, so my doctor said I'm always going to make stones." That is so fiction. Or patients will say, "I'm vegan, and my doctor said I have to start eating meat." Fiction!

You do not have to change your whole lifestyle. It's not that the vegan diet caused your kidney stones, it's how you went about that lifestyle. And so, typically, vegans, specifically, and I have many of them in my practice and they continue to be vegans because they work with me, they understand what they need to do and change, and then it's all good.

Vegans tend to overeat almonds, nuts, beans, spinach. These are things they're eating to get– well, not the spinach part, but the– but the beans, tofu, all of these things they're using, nuts, to get protein needs met. And they're overeating those foods.

Spinach is always in things in vegans' diets. They're always overeat– they're overeating those foods. We know here we– I only take away spinach and almond products.

Yes, rhubarb is high, too. Most people are not overeating that.

I think that's rhubarb, right?

Whatever, rhubarb! Yes! It's so uncommon that people are like, "Jill, I was eating rhubarb all day long." I don't even know how to say that damn vegetable, okay?

Whatever the hell it is. That's really high. Miso soup is really high.

There's things that are really high, but typically people aren't overdoing those foods like the spinach and almond product thing– almond flour on keto diet, almond– almonds, and then almond milk, right? The whole world is drinking almond milk. And so, this is what happens when we overconsume products that are really high in oxalate along with not getting our calcium needs met.

And I will say this for the millionth time, I have never, ever in 25 years worked with somebody and they said, "Hey, Jill, shut up! I get plenty of calcium." Not one person, because until we have an issue that is caused by lack of calcium, like high oxalate or bone disease, osteoporosis, osteopenia, no one's ever told us about calcium.

We stop drinking milk as a little kid, and then we don't even ever think about it. If anything, we stay away from all dairy because it's supposed to be terrible for us. That's a whole other video and I'm not going to get into that controversy here.

But anyway, you need calcium, folks, to keep you upright. You want good bone health. And in the kidney stone world, we want you to get enough calcium to lower oxalate because it's the only way it can leave its body.

It's got to join with calcium in your intestine, leave through the stool. So, if you're not eating enough calcium, the oxalate that you're bringing in is going to get reabsorbed because it can't leave with calcium like it wants to, okay? So, very important, vegan diets do not make you a stone maker.

It's how you're doing the vegan diet. Eat all fruits and vegetables in normal portions. Get your calcium needs met.

For you vegans, it is harder, but a lot easier now to get calcium needs met, a lot easier these days with all these alternative non-dairy milks. We have, and perhaps they'll be posted with this video, but we do have articles on– there's a non-dairy calcium for vegans, non-dairy calcium foods or whatever for vegans, 16 non-dairy foods for vegans to get their calcium, something like that.

Jeff's like, "Shut up, Jill." I forget. But we have plenty of things on the website that you vegans can safely get your calcium needs met. So, people will say, "Well, I don't know how to do it." We give you all the answers in that blog post.

It's all there. As far as tofu, people will say, "Oh, yeah, Jill, I don't eat tofu anymore." You can have three and a half ounces of tofu. It's– I don't know, I think 13 mg of oxalate, so you can– you can still have tofu, guys, to get your protein needs met.

Again, it's portion not perfection. It's how much you're eating, are you getting enough calcium needs met every day, and widen your horizon. So, beans, can you have them?

The meal plan that I put out, there's a meal plan, a subscription meal plan, plenty of vegan dishes in there, because I like eating a lot of vegetables and fruits, too. So, I call myself more of a flexitarian. If I want some meat, I eat some meat.

If I want all veggies that day, I eat all veggies. I don't put myself in a box. Mostly low-carb, but the meal plan has something for everybody.

And so, you'll see people will write me who are on the meal plan, "Jill, how do you use beans for this?" Well, in each recipe, I also write, "Here's some education. Here's why I used it." Some people don't read those notes. But the reason is the portion.

Maybe I used a cup of beans, but it's for four people. So, you can easily still have these things. You just can't eat four cups of beans a day by yourself, and that's what people were doing as a vegan to get their protein needs met, and beans are high in oxalate.

Good articles on my blog about beans and oxalate, tea and oxalate, all the things that people overconsume. So, vegan diet is not going to cause a kidney stone unless you're not getting your calcium needs met and/or you're not– you're overdoing the highest oxalate foods. Many people in my practice will stop making stones, but they are not giving up their vegan lifestyle.

They have a call with me. They understand. I specifically make the call about what they were doing, and we get a plan in place, and they do their urine collection.

They're eating all their plants and all the things in normal portion size, and their oxalate level is now low, and they're getting their calcium needs met. So, vegan diet does not cause kidney stones. It's how patients are doing that vegan diet.

Yeah. Yeah, and that also ties back to the benefit of working with you directly, so there's all the goals, there's all the framework, but then knowing that say through the group coaching calls, you're able to address things specifically, that everyone's individual needs can then be met in the way that they need to be met.

You're meeting them where they are instead of telling them where they should already be, which is so important and so valuable.

Jeff, I love that you say this, and I wish– I think medicine should be– it should never be generic. This is– this is why I went rogue. This is why I do what I do on my own as far as not working in a hospital anymore.

There's no time to educate patients the way one should. There's no time in a doctor's office, and does the doctor have any knowledge about nutrition? Unlikely.

So I think the issue is the only way to get patients to be compliant to long-term dietary changes is you have to have a long conversation with the patient. It's not just about my agenda. I don't want you to have kidney stones.

That is my agenda. But my bigger agenda is how can I get what I want done, never have a patient form another kidney stone again, but also keep them happy, so they're compliant for the long term? So, if I'm if I'm having a pri- private consult with somebody and they're like, "Jill, I'm going to tell you right now, sister, I need this in my diet," could be cream in their coffee.

It has added sugar. I'm not going to take that away. I'm like, "Okay, Jimmy Bob, I'll give you the cream for your coffee if you give me those 10 Oreos after dinner." "All right, Jill, I'll do that." So, you got to work with each patient and you said it exactly right, Jeff.

You've got to meet people where they are. Throw out your agenda, healthcare professionals, and– but see, they don't have time. It's not their fault.

I have time. I could do– if I– if somebody schedules an hour with me and I have time to go over that hour, oh, we're going overtime if they need it. I don't book extra for that or money or– you got to talk and meet people where they are.

That's why I do this. That's why I'm out of a hospital setting. Couldn't do it that way.

It's just not set up that way, and it's even worse. That was a million years ago. So, doing this on my own, I can talk to patients.

They can tell me what they like, what other medical conditions they have that may bother, you know. I got to keep all that stuff– I got to pay attention to all of that. It's not just me cramming down low salt, low added sugar, don't eat that, don't eat that.

That doesn't work for people, clearly. One in two people have diabetes. Look at the obesity rate in our country.

This doesn't work, vilifying food, saying something's a superfood or this food is a crappy food. Are you kidding me? That doesn't work for people!

You've got to say, "What do you like? And by the way, still have it. Just don't have it every single day." Portion size!

If somebody came to me and was obese, which many of my patients are, they'll say, "I don't want to give up all this food. As a matter of fact, Jill, I don't know if I'm going to make any changes." Even if you just ate half of the food you're eating every day, keep the same exact food, if you just paid attention to portion, you will lose weight, you'll be eating less salt, you'll be eating less added sugar.

It's portion. We eat too much. In our culture, we eat too much.

My folks love going out to eat and they'll say, "Oh, God, Jill, you see how much they gave you?" Doesn't even matter if the plate's good food, it's just how much you got. "Oh, my god! Oh, my god!

The plate's so big." We like to eat! That's what we like to eat. We need to knock it off.

We need to eat a little bit less, just a little bit, makes a world of a difference. I'm not a believer in never eat a bun again. That's ridiculous!

Who wants to live knowing they can't ever have a piece of bread again? It's ridiculous! So, everything within moderation.

We do take away spinach because it's hundreds and hundreds of oxalate, milligrams of oxalate. Almond products are just all over the place. No one ever said, "Babe, get me one almond.

Get the bag, but just bring me one almond." Nobody's ever said that. And they're very high in oxalate. So, we've got to just pay mind to portions.

So, I wore my Portion Not Perfection shirt today because that's– that's really the bigger problem. It's how much we're eating. It's not what we're eating so much, it's how much we're eating of that.

And even healthy foods, as vegans have found out, can cause problems in the kidney stone world. It's very annoying, but it's true.

Yeah. So, I think that's a perfect spot to wrap. If you're out there with a question, the number is 773-789-8763 and we'd love to feature you on a future episode.

But you can dive into everything that we talked about at kidneystonediet.com where you can find the free email newsletter. Every weekend, Jill sends you an email to keep you sort of on track and just keep you going on the pace that you've already started. You've taken the action to begin.

Like Jill's talked about previously, the education is only one step. You actually have to start, you have to go and keep going with it to stay on track and make habit changes. So, that email's a little a little nugget in your inbox every week to help keep you on track.

But if you want to dive deeper, you can work with Jill directly in the group coaching calls, which you can also find at kidneystonediet.com. And that will get you right direct access to Jill, but in a way where you're working with the community and other people who also are experiencing something very similar to what you're experiencing.

With that, I think we'll wrap for this week. Thank you again for tuning in. Thank you for subscribing, giving a thumbs up, leaving a comment, sharing with a friend, it all means a lot.

And with that, we'll wrap and we'll see you next week.

Everybody have a wonderful week. Thanks for being with us.