MSK (Medullary Sponge Kidney) and Kidney Stones

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SPYR.

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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.

And I'm Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse.

Here we are, we're back at it. How you doing? I love the I love the shirt.

It's looking good.

Portion, not perfection.

Dave did a stunning job on these.

Yeah, I really like it.

It's really pretty, too, and the color and everything. I know that, you know, we made these T-shirts at kidneystonediet.com because people

Kept bugging us for them. Bugging us in a happy way, not mean. I'm just saying though, people were like, "You should make some T-shirts.

I love the portion, not perfection thing." So, we got a whole bunch of new merch on the website. Enjoy it.

Dave also put a little our little kidney stone logo on the back, so it's a picture of a little kidney with a stone in it. So, I thought he was very clever in doing that. It's one of my favorite things.

And, yeah,

I have the hoodie. I got it all.

Yeah, we'll be seeing a lot more of them on the show.

Yeah, we're seeing a lot more because they're and they're fun colors, too. So, yeah, I love it. And they're good quality.

So, they are a little bit more expensive, but I will tell you what, the three of us, Dave, Jeff, and Jill, we do not do anything in low quality, so, you know, you pay what you get for in life and this is except when I have sales on my services. They are all priced nicely, people. But these are I didn't we didn't want to get crappy T-shirts.

I mean, you know, so they're nice. The hoodies are super comfortable and warm and just really high quality, and we all know that I love a hoodie. So, it had to be high quality.

Definitely. Yeah.

So, how are you doing, Jeff?

Oh, yeah, I'm doing good. Just busy. It's cold out already.

It's fall, which throws me off. But, today, Amara and I are actually going to the world's largest corn maze. It's like, I think it's Richardson's Farm.

It's an hour, maybe hour plus away. But, it should be fun. This year, they have it carved out, you can see it from above, it's carved out like a huge James Bond like 007 tribute thing.

So, like there's a lot of different paths in there, so it'll be neat.

That's amazing and the weather is perfect. It's chilly

And it's sunny. So, it's a perfect fall day. But I'll I'll say this, so one time I took my son to a corn maze.

So, he was five, so it was like for a baby, okay?

So, we went to this friggin corn maze, man, and it was one of those really weird days where it was like, I don't know, 80.

And so, he and I, because anybody that knows me knows that I really have no sense of direction. So, he was like, "Let's go in the corn maze," and I was like, "Oh, shit. Okay, baby." I didn't say oh, shit in front of my baby.

But I did say, "Okay."

So, I took him in that corn maze and, dang, if we didn't get lost in a little baby corn maze. But I'm sweating, I looked at him, he was a bright cherry red. Oh, my god.

So, we haven't been in a corn maze since. But God bless, enjoy your time.

Yeah. Well, no, yeah, it should be fun. It's I mean, it's so

You'll have a ball.

Yeah, it's so different that like it's just such a novel thing. And it's like we neither of us can believe, we're recording this on what, the 28th of October. Neither of us can believe that Halloween is days away.

Like, how is it already this far into the season? It's craziness.

I don't know. But I, you know, look, the older you get, the faster time goes. And that is just the Remember when you were like, you know, 10 and you're like, "Oh, summer." It felt like an eternity.

Now summer's like just a blip in time. And so, yeah, look, I mean, the older we get, the back half, the middle and back half of life goes like that. And that is why we got to take care of these bodies of ours, right?

We just must,

Because time does go fast and you want to do things you love, like take your lady to a cornfield, the largest one ever, and just have a wonderful afternoon. That's what this is about, enjoying that,

Being healthy enough and strong enough and emotionally prepared enough to just enjoy something like that. It's the simple things in life that are so wonderful, right?

Definitely. Yeah, it's just so important. And like we do the work.

Like the work is sort of what funds things, but then you got to have that time away, time to yourself, time to do things that yeah, that give you that reward.

Oh, my god, so much fun. I'm excited for you, too.

Yeah, it'll be a good time. But, yeah, what do you say, should we dive right into a listener voicemail today?

Yeah, let's see what you got for me this week, lovey.

All righty.

Hi. How are you both? I'm actually a new listener to your podcast.

Jill, I wanted to ask you, my name is Gina Prado and I'm from Paramus, New Jersey. I have a medullary sponge kidney,

Which my urologist tells me means that I have that I make stones basically because of the way the kidney is shaped and drains.

I'm 52 years old now. This has been going on since I was 34.

I have at least that I know about, and I have many stones on both sides.

I just had to have surgery to have one lasered and I now also have a lithotripsy scheduled in October

To get a couple more on the right side.

So my question to you is, is there any hope for me?

And my stones are calcium oxalate. So, should I take the Kidney Diet Prevention Course?

Obviously, now I've printed out all my oxalate list and everything, I'm just very confused. And my last question is, should I be taking a vitamin D with K supplement because I've also heard mixed things about that causing kidney stones?

And I'm also thinking about, like I said, taking your course and being able to talk to you in person.

Okay, thank you so much. I hope you both have a wonderful day.

Gina from New Jersey.

When I was growing up in New York, I had a little friend named Gina. She was trouble, that one. She got me in a lot of trouble.

But I loved her, little Gina from New York. Okay, so Gina from New Jersey, hello and thank you for thank you for being here. You know,

Jeff's like, "Oh, shit. Here she goes." Wait, hold on.

Wait. Wait. So, here's here's the thing.

We take it very seriously. She's a new listener. She has MSK, which is medullary I always I always say it wrong, medullary sponge kidney.

And this is when the kidney is such that it's kind of like a sponge, so things just don't filter out as quickly as they should, so crystals and stones can get stuck in her kidneys, right?

And so, her question is, am I basically doomed for the rest of my life because I have MSK?

But the first thing I want to say is, you know, we take it really seriously here. We joke around a lot here, too, because, you know, you have to have some levity when you're dealing with hard things. You just must.

I mean, when I was going through all my cancer stuff, I still wanted to laugh because you just you just have to, because it's hard.

But even though we definitely joke around a lot here, we take our viewers very seriously because they're trusting us with their information. They're trusting us to give them the clinically correct answer, and we're very serious about that, very serious. Okay, so, Gina, thanks for being here and thanks for trusting us and listening.

So her urologist said, "Listen, sis, basically you're going to be a stone maker." Well, I'm

You are more apt to get stones and they may be harder to prevent, but I will tell you from my 24 years of experience,

I have a lot of MSK patients and a lot of them, if they don't stop making stones, they certainly lower their risk greatly.

So, there is absolutely hope for you. And if you went on my private Facebook page, which is Kidney Stone Prevention Diet,

You will see there is a lot of MSK patients there and they will tell you themselves. You don't Nobody here has to believe anything I say. Go look at the reviews and the praise on my website, on Facebook, you'll see.

And it's not even about me. It's about how hard my patients work and my students work to get where they are. I just gave some information out.

That's all I'm doing. You have to do the hard work. So, Gina, the other thing I want to say is, God, I'm sorry you have to go through, by this time, you've probably already gone through it by the time this airs, but I'm so sorry that you have to have yet another kidney stone removal procedure, in this case, a lithotripsy.

Managing Calcium Oxalate Stones With Medullary Sponge Kidney

So, and I heard that you make calcium oxalate stones,

But you can absolutely lower your kidney stone risk 100%. I don't care if you have MSK or you have or somebody's obese or they have diabetes or they make a different type of stone. The Kidney Stone Prevention Course is for all stone makers, all stone Well, "Sure it is, Jill, you want to make money." It's not about that.

I'm offering you a service,

Which is on sale right now at 40 bucks off, our lowest price ever, take advantage of it. And this is airing October what is it, 27th, Jeff?

Yeah, today's the 28th, but it'll come out November 1st, I think.

Okay, so the point is by the time you hear this video, folks, it could that deal could be off. So, the deal is at kidneystonediet.com we're offering it because of the recession. It's $40 off.

And what you get is you'll get 4 hours of video that you can play and you have lifetime access to anytime you want. That's me teaching

The basic stuff on the Kidney Stone Diet. But the best part of the Kidney Stone Prevention Course, I could have easily just sent you to those videotapes and you never hear from me again. But in good conscience, I couldn't do that, plus my joy comes from working with people.

So, yes, I'll teach you how to lower salt and all the things of the Kidney Stone Diet. But the point is to come to the accountability calls where you can work with me in a group setting and get your specific

Needs and questions met by me. And by the way, I always say this, we have a great time in there, too. It's a special place where you get support, you can hear from other people that are going through the same thing, and we all we have a good time.

We share a lot of things. I also share personal things there that I don't just necessarily share here, because it does need to be a safe place. I'm not just going to put my personal business out on the internet

Without it being safe. So, so we share all kinds of things there. If you want to lose weight, people lose 50 pounds, 90 pounds, because they're staying long-term.

So, that is given to you for the first month free. I'm giving my time away. That would be over nearly $2,000.

And then thereafter every month, it's only $19. I mean, it's $4 a week.

So, to work with me privately is 250 bucks. So, I'm literally giving my time away. Take advantage of it, people.

I am not somebody who likes selling things. Really could have fooled me, Jill. The reason I can sell what I'm doing is it's such a valuable service and opportunity for you to stop making kidney stones.

I have people that are competing with me, their course is over $300. I'm not doing that.

And they have I have the most experience. I'm doing this because I want to reach a broad audience. I want to meet reach as many people as I can.

If I out-price this stuff, you're not going to learn. Also, if you can't afford to work with me on any level, we pour our heart and soul into this YouTube channel and also kidneystonediet.com for all the free resources, the Facebook page, the newsletter, we give it away free if you can't afford anything.

Okay, back to Gina. Gina, you can absolutely take the course and you will be helped. The end.

Take it while it's on sale. Get it. And I know you're recovering right now, so, you know, take care of yourself.

She also asked about vitamin D and K supplements. There is a video on this channel about vitamin D.

If you need vitamin D, it helps you absorb calcium. If you need it, a blood test will tell you. Some people just are like, "Hey, I read in the D- Reader's Digest that I'm supposed to take vitamin D." So, they go to the Walgreens, they look at vitamin D, they see 1,000, 2,000 IUs, 10,000 I Ooh, I'm going to get 10,000 because I know more is better.

Now,

First of all, they went to the Walgreens, they don't even know if they need it. They just read a blurb in some kind of something and said, "I'm going to take it." If a If a blood test says you need it, you should take it under the advice of your doctor. Don't be just taking vitamins off shelves.

The vitamin people know you're doing that and they lot they like making all the money you're spending and most of you don't need any of those vitamins. A blood test will tell you what you're deficient in.

That's when you take supplements. So, vitamin D can be very helpful if you need it. It can be It can increase your kidney stone risk if you already have enough vitamin D and now you take more, and now you're over-absorbing calcium, and the excess is winding up in your urine.

Too much calcium in your urine can increase your stone risk

Because it's it's looking for other crystals and minerals like ox- oxalate and phosphate. So, you don't want too much calcium in your urine. Too much vitamin D can cause that.

All right? So, if you need it, please take it. I supplement with vitamin D because I live in Chicago and we only see the sun a few times a month, especially in winter.

So, I do take it. I take 2,000 IUs, but I take it because I know what my level is. I want to raise it to a certain part point,

And then I just use a maintenance dose. Okay? Vitamin K, if you have bone disease and you need vitamin K or your doctor says, "Hey, you might want it," because they'll know all your medical stuff.

If the doctor says you want to take vitamin K as a K as a supplement, then do so. But talk to your doctor about supplements, people. A lot of you are wasting a lot of money.

You don't need these things.

If you look on the back of the supplement, it will say vitamin A, just as an example, 5,000% of your RDA. Well, why do you need that much? And people look at that and go, "Ooh, look at all that vitamin E I'm A I'm getting." People, you don't need supplements unless a blood test has told you do in for the for the most part, okay?

Talk to your doctor about supplements. It's important. Just don't take them.

I mean,

They're not doing anything for you, okay? So, but talk to your doctor. There's that.

And I think I think I did cover everything. So, to wrap that up for sweet Gina, of course there's hope! Of course there's hope!

Role of Urine Collections and Practical Dietary Education

I also hope, Gina, you have done a urine collection to see precisely what is I get the MSK diagnosis, but also, what else is going on?

A urine collection will tell you, and you don't need a urine collection, folks, to join the Kidney Stone Prevention Course, especially while it's on sale. Do it so you can educate yourself. We couldn't have hundreds of YouTube videos, I couldn't be doing this for all these years if there wasn't so much information to teach you.

Because just teaching people on nutrition,

Which they have no clue about nutrition, because the diet industry has told us a million conflicting things, so we don't know anything. People don't know what food is good or bad. All day I'm pelleted, "Is this good?

Is this bad?" Meanwhile, we're grown people. We should be able to make good decisions upon food, but we can't because the diet industry has been bothering us about food and telling us we got it all wrong every year when they create a new diet

To make money. So, my advice that we give here, the advice we give at Kidney Stone Diet is a lot of common sense, practical information, doable information, honest information. No bullshit here.

And we will also say that this is hard work,

Because it is, and anything worth getting in your life is going to be hard work. So, stop listening to diet industry saying it's quick and easy, because if it was quick and easy, guess what else is going to be real quick and real easy to do? Gain all the weight back, because that's what the diet industry tells us.

"Easy weight loss" is always going to be "easy weight gain," because if it's easy weight loss fix, it you will not be able to sustain that long-term,

Okay? So, it's hard work, but I don't know where else you want to put hard work in except your health. There's nothing more important than that.

You don't need me to tell that to you. That's what I have to say about this. What do you have to say, Jeff?

Well, yeah, I think it's important, too, because sort of the thing, "I have this ailment, am I doomed?" And I think leaning on the fact that this is reducing someone's risk, so, like you said, like we can it absolutely will reduce the risk. Will it be zero? Maybe not.

But it will be a lowered risk, which then will result in a better quality of life. And that's sort of like why we couple that, too, is reduce your risk to live a great life. It's like doing everything that we can in our power, no matter what we're faced with, to approach it in the best way, and that's what you help people do.

Yeah, and that's exactly right, Jeff. Here's what else I hear in her words. And I know people are like, "Oh, God, Jill, you're so, you're so silly and dramatic." But this is what I hear.

I hear she's anxious. This is not a judgment, this is just what I hear. And from somebody who's been very sick in her life, me,

I know what it's like to be sick and anxious, and now you have nothing against this doctor, he's saying, "Look, you know, you're going to make stones." You know, I have a lot of patients that don't make more stones, so there is that, who have MSK. But more importantly, what I want I want I want her to understand that she does have some control of this, right?

So, there's sometimes we get diseases that we really don't have control over, she has no control over MSK. She was She has it, she was born with it.

Spongy kidneys, okay? So, things don't filter as quickly as possible and things get stuck more in her kidneys. But what I'm saying is we always have control over what we put in our body.

But if she feels anxious and hopeless, then she may not She may not seek out the information. Thank God she is! She's saying, "Look, and I'm She's saying, "Look, I'll do whatever I can.

Should I join your course?" You know, "Will it help me?" It will 100% help you. I know it will help you,

Because I've helped many people with MSK. But of course, I'm not a genie, you have to do the work. More importantly, we should never, whether you have MSK or cancer or asthma or whatever you have, please never give up hope.

Just don't. You can always control a little bit at least with diet, exercise, working on your attitude, your emotions, your stress,

Sleeping, hydration, all of that will never be like, "Holy shit, I can't believe I drank enough today." No one's ever going to say that. "I can't believe I'm sleep- sleeping like a baby. I can't believe I've managed my stress so." No one!

Everyone's going to be happy with those things. They're Do If my cancer comes back, I know, cuz it's come back a couple times, okay? So, you know, it's very probable.

If it comes back,

I know that I'll be able to look my son in his eyes and he will say, "God knows my mom did whatever she could to make this not come back," right? As opposed to if I just did whatever I wanted to and just led a whole life of debauchery and said, "Oh, well, it's probably going to come back, might as well do this or that or that, unhealthy things." And if it did come back, I'd always feel bad about that, right?

So, if it comes back, I know that I have done everything possible. And what I'm asking all of you, whether you have kidney stones, diet- diabetes, or whatever,

Just never give up hope. Never give up hope. You're never hopeless.

There's always something you can do. Always, always. I'm very passionate about that because of my personal experiences, right?

So, never give up hope. There's always something you can do. There's always some control you can have because when we have medical conditions and disease, it's very easy to feel like you're you feel it's very easy to feel hopeless.

I understand that, too. So,

So, there is hope for you, Gina. I promise you, I do promise you that. That's it, Jeff.

Yeah, I think hope is a perfect note to end this week's episode on. So, yeah, thanks, Gina, for your question. If you're out there listening or watching, and you have a question, the number is 773-789-8763 and we'd love to feature your voice on a future episode.

And to dive in more, head on over to kidneystonediet.com where you can find the prevention course that we were talking about today, the meal plans, also the free email newsletter which has been growing like wild, which is awesome. And I know people are really loving everything that you're sending out, because we're seeing the feedback.

We're seeing the sort of that feedback loop going into effect. So, for everyone who has subscribed, thank you so much. I hope it's really brightening your Saturdays, you know?

And, yeah, there's just so much out there to help, paid and free. So, we just want to do everything we can to help you guys on your journey. But, yeah, I think with that, we will wrap for this week.

So, yeah, thanks again, Gina, and we will see you all next time.

Thank you, Gina. I hope you're recovering well.