Does Glucosamine cause kidney stones?

SPYR.

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.

Hi, everybody. It's Jill, your kidney stone prevention nurse.

So, what does your shirt say today?

You can put me on pause, I had to take it away. But yeah, what does your shirt say today? Oh, perfect.

Have a nice day. Now, I'm going to tell you,

People are like, "Oh, Jesus. We can't even, why did he have to bring up her stupid shirt? Cuz now she's going to talk about this damn shirt." Hold on.

Now, I want to tell you something. So, I have a friend and she was giving some clothes away.

And she always has cute little shirts. I'm like, "Let me see." So, she had this one. I'm like, "Okay." So, and I took it.

And so, I have torn feelings about this. Of course, it's nice.

But, you know, I think about things a little bit too much sometimes. And so, it reminded me of like the grocery store bags. Have a nice day.

Have a nice day. Have a nice day. And it's like we're always telling people to have a nice day.

I don't know, seems like a lot of pressure. I don't know. I mean, my first instinct is, "Oh, it's so sweet." But, it's also it's like, not every day's a nice day.

So, there you go. Even out of a T-shirt, I can make it a little bit too much, you know, just a bit too much. But, that's what I was thinking as I put it on.

But, I went with, "It's sweet."

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So, I just went with that.

Yeah, I like it. Yeah, but you do make a good point. It is hard to, It's difficult and it can be an empty platitude, as well, because it's said so much.

But,

Yeah. So, lately I've been like, I've been changing it when I see people. I'm like, "Oh, I hope your day goes well." I don't know if it's much different, but it's a little spin on it.

Like, "I hope your day goes well." Cuz it might not, but I'm hoping it does.

Yeah. Definitely. But, yeah.

So,

No.

Now that we got the shirt under control, should we dive in?

Yeah, okay. Let's go. Let's go.

Who's on the phone?

We'll dive into the questions. Today, we have a question from Gina.

Everybody take a drink of water!

Hi, my name is Gina, and I am a repeat kidney stone producer. I have had surgery to remove the kidney stones, and they just keep coming back. So, I do watch the diet and all.

But, my question is, I've had to stop taking collagen, because I'm a I'm a female in my 50s, run and do all those good things, bike, swim, whatever. And, I developed a little knee, issue. So, I started taking glucosamine.

And, I think it could be causing kidney flare-ups here, with the kidney stones again. So, my question is, what about glucosamine? Is that a problem for people that tend to produce kidney stones?

So, I'll stop it right there, because she does leave her number. But, yeah.

No. We don't want to put her phone number out there.

No.

So, you know, I know that glucosamine is something that a lot of older, and I'm older, people use for joint issues. I don't know how well-documented it is, quite frankly, I don't. But, I do know people use it, stone formers or not.

So, and you know, collagen is all the rage. There's no good studies, people, and start researching it yourself, that shows collagen helps with hair and nails, just so you know. There's no good science that says that it does.

So, there's that. Although, there's patients that will say, "Jill, my hair grew like a weed once I started taking the collagen.".. I don't know what to tell you.

Collagen we know, cuz she said she was on, did she say she was on a mix of it at some point, or she was on collagen, and then she got off of it?

Let me just double-check.

Or am I making stuff up? This is what people ask me so much.

Yeah, so she said she had to stop taking collagen because she's a female in her 50s.

Yeah. So, okay. So, the collagen, we know, can convert over to oxalate.

We ask people to stay away from collagen supplements. Honestly, please do that. The coat the glucosamine, I don't know of anything that's that will show an increase of kidney stones with this amino acid, and I think it's fine for kidney stones.

That being said, I'm not using it. I don't, you know, but I'm not saying you shouldn't. I don't think it has any increase of, kidney stone risk, so not a problem.

Collagen does. Sometimes the glucox- glucosamine and the collagen are put together. So, if you're taking that duo supplement, get rid of the collagen part and take your glucosamine.

She said, now, also, I would say, if this were somebody that did not tell me what she did, she said she's active, she's watching her diet. I don't know, I hear this a lot, "I'm watching my diet." Then when you do a urine collection, you can see what you think you're doing and what you're really doing can be two totally different things.

I'm telling this or saying this to, to Gina because she said she's a repeat stone former. So, it would be wonderful to see some urine collections on her to see really what her diet is. Again, I am all most of my information, of course, it's all based upon science on my mentor site and an- anybody who does kidney stone risk and is a researcher, the things I talk about are well-researched.

But all the other things I talk about, like how to change your lifestyle and habits and all this, is from decades of talking to people. So, I want to be careful what I say here, so people don't think I'm being judgmental, because I'll get that sometimes. Often I hear when I'm going over a urine collection with people, "Jill, I don't I watch my salt.

I don't use the salt shaker." And when we look at their salt in their urine collection, it's 5,000. Because they're not realizing, although they're watching their sodium, they're not paying attention to portion size. People will say, "Jill, this product is low-salt.

It can't be that." "Yeah, but you had six servings of that. It was six portions, not the one that's low-salt. Now, you had six portion, and it's high-salt now." So, it's all kinds of things that we human beings, all of us have done, that we think we're doing one thing and it turns out we're really not.

And the thing about the urine test, urine don't lie. So, what you eat and drink that day comes out in your urine that day, so we can see. And I cannot tell you countless, countless, thousands and thousands of people, once they do the urine collection, it is so eye-opening for them.

And then, they can really learn how what does it mean to watch your sodium. So, anyway, I don't have a problem with the glu- glucosamine. Collagen is not good, dump it, people.

Eat well. That can also help, you know, maybe hair loss. Hair loss, too, underlying conditions, thyroid, Graves' disease, there's there's stuff going on, people, that can be the reason for the hair loss.

Before you start taking pills or supplements, talk to your doctor. "Hey, doc, I'm losing, you know, my nails, my, my, hair's falling out. Please get some blood work done." Could be an indication of something else is going on.

But Gina's interesting to me because she's telling us that, you know, she does all the right things. She said she's very active, as well. So, I would love to see a urine collection on Gina because she's a she's making a lot of stones, so she says, and that's what makes me nervous.

There's something going on with her that a urine collection will definitely show, because she shouldn't have repeat stones. If you are doing the diet as we ask you to do it, unless there's some genetic stuff going on. Some people will do the diet, they will still make stones, and once they do the urine collection, they'll see that they have idiopathic hypercalciuria, or their vitamin D is whacked, or their PTH, there's so many things, guys.

Stone disease is complicated, but you want to begin with the urine collection. And no matter what you're diagnosed with, the Kidney Stone Diet will always help, because we're paying attention to sugar and salt, which will keep calcium in your bone. The other thing is, are we losing bone mass because we're eating too much sugar and salt and meat protein?

So, that's pulling calcium out of our bone into the urine. Could it be that? And I'm not saying that for Gina, but there's so many things is what I'm saying.

It's very complicated, and the urine collection is the first thing you should be doing once you make a kidney stone. And whether your doctor says no or yes, well, if the doctor says no, you push for it. It is just something that needs to be done.

You would not be put on any kind of med if you Nobody would put you on hypertensive medications if they didn't take your blood pressure first. It's a test that leads to diagnose you, and that's what the urine collection does. So, you could be doing the diet perfectly, but you're still making stones because there's other things the urine collection will show your doctor that could be the reason for it.

Very important, Gina. And Gina may have them. She just didn't say anything about it.

So, Gina, let us know if you've had a urine collection or not. You can certainly call back and we can talk a little bit more about it. That's absolutely fine.

But glucosamine, I don't see it as a problem. Doesn't mean you should take tons of it. Take whatever the portion size is on the bottle.

And also, whenever you're taking supplements, people, you really should talk to your doctor about them to see if there's if they are okay for you. The supplement industry is not regulated. You're spending a lot of money on them, you should at least talk to your doctor and/or pharmacist about them.

But as far as collagen mixed with glucosamine, that would be a no-go for kidney stone risk. Thank you.

Yeah, I mean that is all so important. And I just wanted to ask one thing: How do you feel about food journals? Because, of course, the urine analysis will tell us exactly what's happening, what's within the system.

Do you find value in having a food journal? Because it is so difficult to actually see what we're eating. Like you said, like, "Oh, I'm eating well." And this is nothing against Gina, just us as humans, like, "Oh, I'm eating well.

I'm not having a lot of this. I'm focusing on that." But our perception doesn't always match the reality.

Oh, yeah. So, when patients first work with me, I will tell them, "Listen, after a while, you won't need to do this. But, at first, I highly suggest you get a food journal and write down what you eat." "Well, Jill, I'm putting it in MyFitnessPal and MyFitnessPal said I only had 1,500 mg of sodium that day." But, MyFitnessPal or Cronometer or whatever app you're using, only works if you're putting in how much you really ate.

So, what you think is a cup is two cups. You're just eyeballing it. I cannot tell you how many times this hap- This happens daily with my patients.

Or, they will get I'll do the initial urine collection consult with them. I educate them. Then, we're doing the follow-up one, and their numbers look excellent.

And they're like, "You know, I really started tracking, whether they use an app or notebook. What I was really eating every day, and I even started weighing some food." It takes two seconds, people. I know it seems arduous at first, but it really It doesn't take long at all.

Or using measuring cups for my milk, cuz some people are like, "Yeah, here's a cup of milk." And their whole bowl of cereal is like three cups of milk, you know? And the problem with that is it's way too much calcium, the body's not going to absorb it all at once. So, once people say, "I got off the phone with you, it was very annoying.

But, then I sat and I listened, and I thought about, I'm like, 'Oh, let me try this.'" And then, they were like, "God, I had no idea that the portion I was choosing to put in that bowl was three times of what it was." I mean, I do the same thing. I am so spatially challenged that I do get a cup and put my milk in a cup, because I just am so not good with that, even all the cooking I do and everything else.

I'm so not good with that. I weigh out my meat portions, cuz I tend to go too little. So, I weigh out my meat portions for a, if I'm using carbs, I only use half or 1/4 of a cup at a time, so I measure it out.

So, you know, and I've done this for decades. So, everybody's a little bit different. I've never met a patient who first comes to me and is able to eyeball their food and liquid well.

It isn't until they really start sitting back and writing things down and really being honest with how much they're eating, and their whole world changes. They lose weight. People say, "I can't lose weight because I'm old." I'm old, I can lose weight.

You got to be honest with what you're doing. I got 80-year-olds that work with me, 400, 300, 200 lb, drop it, drop it, drop it. Fast?

No. Takes time, people. But, you can, you can.

There's no barrier unless you're on certain medications or something, or have some kind of medical condition, but it's that's so rare, okay? So, you have to be honest with really how much you're eating, and some of you, not enough. So, it's not just for overeating, it's also for not enough, like sometimes I do that.

So, it's a lot, a lot, right? There's just so much, so much always to learn and talk about when it comes to fitness and nutrition. It's why it's, you know, it's why I've loved doing it for so many years, cuz there's always something new to think about, new studies coming out, you know, all of it.

What people do, human nature, it's fascinating to me.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so thank you so much for the question. That was a great one.

And the number, if you have a question, is 773-789-8763, and we will feature you on a future episode. And, you talked about the urine analysis a lot in this episode, that's such an important part, and there is the urine analysis service, where, you can spend, what is it, 15 minutes with Jill breaking down

No, it's 30 now.

Oh, it's 30, okay. Yeah.

Yeah, that 15 minute call, I was doing 30 minutes, because it's just, you know, I mean, I like overachieving. But, it is a 30 minute call. That call is a 30 minute call, for sure.

So, yeah, now it is 30 minutes.

Yeah. Well, yeah, if you want the help, breaking down sort of what the urine analysis means, then you'll have a better, a better appointment with your doctor and everything. So, it's hugely valuable that, highly recommend it.

And, yeah, with that, I think we'll wrap for this week. Thanks again, everyone, for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.

Gina, great question, thank you so much! Bye, everybody.