Can I eat almonds if I have them with calcium?

Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast, the show about reducing your risk for kidney stones and living your best life. I'm your host and fellow student, Jeff Sarris.

And here I am, Jill Harris, and I'm happy to be here, I must say.

Oh, and I just remembered, the other day in an email, you mentioned the turn-it-around Buster Brown. I had no idea that was a specific brand or anything!

Yes, because you're too young! And, also, I'm Jill Harris, the Kidney Stone Prevention Nurse, so they're like, "Who the hell are you?" Okay, so, turn-it-around Buster Brown, I think, look, most of my kidney stone patients are my age, and so I'm almost I'm la- I'm looking at 60, and so it's, you know, between 40, 75 are kidney stone patients.

So, a lot of them, when we grew up, our moms took us to the shoe store, and there was a shoe brand called Buster Brown. And it was this little boy with this funny little hat and his little dog.

And so, I don't know, and it would look like there were little white shoes that we all wore. They're hideous, if you look back. It's the kind of shoe that you always that your that your mother bronzed when you were little.

Anyway, so my demographic has grown up with Buster Brown. So, when I say turn-it-around Buster Brown on a on a nutrition label, I think they laugh because it's nostalgic, right?

So, I'm like, okay, we need to take me and Luke, Luke is the chocolate, my chocolate lab, and we need to put us on a mug and say "Turn it around, Buster Brown," or something. And people will get it because they're old like me, they understand it. It's a big deal.

Everybody had Br- Yeah, everyone had Buster Brown shoes. I'm not going to wear that stupid hat he wore. Google it, people.

Buster Brown shoes, and you'll see what I'm talking about. I'll wear a baseball cap or something, and Luke, my beautiful 90-pound chocolate lab, he'll be with me. It will be hilarious.

Yeah, where is he today? He's not over your shoulder.

Oh, he's right there. Usually Listen, if I was on the floor, he'd be sitting on my lap. I'm like, "Listen, dude, you're not a poodle.

You're 90 lb." He's right here. He's very codependent. The apartment we live in is 700 square feet, and when I tell you, if I move 5 in, that dog, I can't tell you how many times I've almost fallen over him.

He is always by my side.

And so I get annoyed a lot, I have to say. Don't get mad at me, pet people. I'm a pet person.

But sometimes I holler at him and then I feel very bad about it, and then, you know, if he's not right at my feet, I get sad. So, we're both codependent. It's not one-sided, I can assure you it's not.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's something just about the I mean, 'cause Alpha, my cat, he's like the same way. It's when we're recording, I like tell him, like I literally talk to him and just like, "Okay, I'm recording now. We can't You can't cuddle." He'd be on my lap.

Like as soon as we end, I don't know how he knows, but as soon as we're done recording, he comes in here, starts meowing, and jumps on my lap. It's the strangest thing.

I mean, they know. They know. They know, and, yes, I know you talk to your cat, I talk to my dog.

You would think there's a family of five living with me in here. My neighbors must be like, "Who the hell does she have in there now?" It's just Luke. It's very scary.

Sometimes my son, of course, my son is also here, but I'm saying when my son's at school, it's just me and Luke. You would think there's a party going on here. It's just us, giggling, laughing, reminiscing.

You know, it's ridiculous. I don't care.

I love it.

But they do! Sometimes I'm walking when I'm walking him, because I live right on Lake Shore Drive, and then also a park. Hence, the really tiny apartment, but, you know, a beautiful view, right?

So, that's why. You got to make priorities. My view is my priority, my living space, not so much.

I'm a small person, I don't need a lot of space.

But, sometimes, I know that people are like, "Oh, Tom, here she comes, that old lady with that stupid dog. Look at them laughing, talking. They're crazy!" I don't care.

I talk to him in front of anybody. I do not care. We have a relationship, we do.

I know it's sad, but I don't care. He makes me very happy.

I think it's shocking, really, the level of relation—and we'll get to kidney stones in a moment, everyone who's listening, but—

What the hell?

The level of relationship and, like, rapport you build with animals, like pets, it's it's mind-blowing. Like, it's really, to a degree, that's beyond what feels like should be possible.

It is, and I, you know, look, what first of all, we're projecting all of our feelings onto these poor little furry things. Of course we are. But I swear to God, there's been many times Luke has whispered things, and I've heard every word, and he does.

My dog laughs. I don't care what anybody says. He giggles.

He does. He's the first thing I do when I wake up, I say, "Good morning, Luke." And I'm telling you, the day that he's not next to me, and I don't, it's going to be very difficult. We ain't going to be taping shows that week, I can assure you about that.

Oh, yeah.

So, I don't think about it, but he's getting as much gray as me. I have to Madison Reed his head as well as mine, now. Terrible.

Not a sponsor, but—

Not a sponsor. No, no sponsor. Oh, God.

All righty, so—

All right, kidney stone stuff.

Let's dive right into this week's question from, looks like, Candi.

Candi, okay.

Hi, my name's Candi, and I live in Grand Ronde, Oregon. And my question—I'm new at the diet, I've had problems with the with one big kidney stone. Anyway, so, I'm hypoglycemic and I eat My thing has always been to eat a little bit of almond butter.

I used to eat a lot of almond butter. Now, I've cut it way back and I'm eating it with calcium—I mean with yogurt. Will that offset each other, so that I can make that part of my if I need start having low blood sugar, I can pop in a bite of almond butter and then a few bites of yogurt, will that work?

Thank you so much. I hope to hear about it soon, now. I'm, yeah.

Okay, thanks. Bye.

So, sorry, Candi, I know she can't hear me, but I interrupted her. First of all, I love her name, Candi, that's joyful and happy. Second of all, it's a beautiful question.

I love talking about diabetes and kidney stone diet because I'm not a special nurse in diabetes, I'm a special nurse in kidney stone stuff, but often I am working with people who have both, okay? So, it's not uncommon for people who have kidney stones to also have diabetes. So,

Many people, many patients, feel very frustrated by the fact that they have both, and it seems to them, upon first inspection, that the two diets are not going to mesh. Why? Because they have been told, "Look, you have diabetes, have almonds, have spinach, have almonds, they're great to get your blood sugar up, they're a high-fiber food, they're healthy fats, have them."

So, when we tell patients to have something, again, I will say this, what does that exactly mean? When patients are told they can have something, and also that something is healthy, we, as human beings, tend to think the more we have of that food, the healthy food, the more health we'll have.

And, also, it's three calories, zero calories, right? Cuz it's just healthy. I mean, you know, nuts are very caloric.

I don't want to get into it with keto people or anything else, I'm just saying I've had a lot of patients that say, "Hey, I'm doing this, but I'm not losing weight, they said I'd lose weight." Well, you're eating two bags of nuts a day. There's hundreds of calories in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Anyway, I digress.

So, for diabetics who are using almond butter to get their blood sugar up, she said she's hypoglycemic, so she's trying to get her blood sugar up. She's not necessarily diabetic, is that correct? She just said hypoglycemic, is that correct?

Yeah, it sounded like hypo. It's tough, we get a transcript from these voicemails, but like sometimes it's a little hard to pick up just because of the cell phone quality, but yeah I'm pretty sure she said hypo.

Yeah, okay, so she's not necessarily diabetic at all, but I'm just saying I love working with patients that are diabetic and have kidney stones, because they think they can't have all these food. You certainly can. Now, for Candi, who is dealing with low blood sugar, she is saying that the almond butter is helping her get her sugar up, so she feels better.

What I would do is, and she's also a kidney stone former, what I would do is I would trade that out for sun butter. And I'm going to say that because we know sun butter is a lot lower in oxalate, sunflower seeds are a lot lower. You know, I also would say, you know, you can also choose another food that will get your blood sugar up.

It doesn't have to be any of those nut butters, but sunflower butter would be a lot better.

Now, that being said, often people will think they can't have almond butter, they can't have peanut butter. I'd rather almond products be taken off the table. They are just too high, and because there's other options out there, why don't we use those instead?

I sleep better. I sleep better, and when I sleep better, I have more energy the next day to do more kidney stone stuff.

So, let's have me sleep better. I would feel very reckless if I said have the almond butter, even if you did limit yourselves to it, I don't like it. It's just too high.

Have sun butter, even have peanut butter. "Jill, peanut butter's high in oxalate." You can have two tablespoons of peanut butter, it's only 26 mg of oxalate. If most of you get 100 mg a day, you can certainly have it.

Now, her other part of the question was, "I'm having it with Greek yogurt, so how much does that cancel it out?" It's too hard to tell. Why? I know you hate that answer, Candi, but the reason is this, we all absorb things differently.

Whenever you have calcium with a high-oxalate product, it will lower your oxalate, but exactly how much? I don't know. Maybe you have Crohn's disease, or ulcerative colitis, maybe you've had a gastric bypass, maybe you have other malabsorption issues.

You may not be absorbing things like Jeff does, or Candi does, or anybody else. So, everybody's different, there's no exact science.

Now, you may say, "But, you're saying all the things that you say is drenched in science." If you go to Dr. Coe, C-O-E, his site, or you put Dr. Coe and kidney stone, you'll see all kinds of research on all kinds from all different kinds of kidney stone researchers saying that when you have more calcium, you will lower your oxalate.

Yes, but they had to research that in, like, really big amounts to be able to see exactly how much or, you know, how it lowered, so they give somebody an exorbitant amount of oxalate and calcium, and then see what happens after. It's not just, you know, sticking to 100 mg of oxalate and sticking to, you know, it's it's just hard to do that.

So, get your calcium throughout the day. Of course, that's going to lower the oxalate that your body is absorbing, for sure, okay? We know this.

But I don't like you having almond, almond anything, Candi, I don't. Use other products like sun butter, you could even use peanut butter, it's not a problem. And, yes, if you are going to have peanut butter, make sure you do have some a little yogurt with it, but also, you wouldn't necessarily have to, okay?

If you do get 100 mg of oxalate a day, and I'm being conservative. Dr. Coe is always like, "You're being conservative on that 100 mg of oxalate," but I want to make sure, at the end of the day, I don't have any patients going, "Oh, my god, it's so hard."

It's not. Once you take away spinach and almonds in any amount that you want, which most of you were doing, along with the even more important part of not getting enough calcium, that's the perfect storm. So, it doesn't mean you can never have peanut butter again.

It does mean I do take away spinach and almond products. Pretty much, though, everything else is on the table. I take away a handful of things and you can find those things on kidneystonediet.com.

If you go to the start page, you're going to see the safe oxalate list and the whole oxalate list. The oxalate list is from Harvard, and I made I took the Harvard list, that's up there, but I also took away the highest-oxalate foods, and guess what? There's still 27 pages on Both lists have 27 pages, so I only took away a few foods.

Get that resource, please, on my website. Of course, it's free. So, Candi, I'd rather you not have almond butter, choose another, like sun butter or even peanut butter, if your blood sugar is going low, that would make me a lot happier and it would really help your oxalate levels.

For my own curiosity, I haven't really looked, cashews? Is there cashew butter, which is something I like, are they high?

Yeah, they're high. They're high. They're high.

Yeah. Pretty much any, so, so here are the nuts that, as long as you keep within portion size on the Kidney Stone Diet, you can have. You can fit pecans, and often my meal plans on the kidneystonediet.com site, I have a meal plan service, and I know when I make one of the meals with some pecans, I know people are like, "What the hell is she thinking?!" But I always have with each recipe, the Kidney Stone Diet prevention safety tips on each res- recipe will explain why I used almonds, how little oxalate if it's in portion, I paired it with calcium, and all kinds of tips and tricks with each recipe to teach you.

But you can have sunflower seeds, you can have flax seeds, you can have pecans, and the and you can have walnuts, you can have all those things. You really can. You just and you could have a couple cashews, but, to me, some of these nuts, like almonds and cashews, what's the point in opening up that bag?

You really can have so little because they're so high, so take them away! Because nobody ever said, "Henry, get me one nut! One, just one, Henry, I'm watching it, one!" No one said that!

They have handfuls of nuts! That's what people do.

So, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, sun butter, peanut butter, of course. Look at the look at the portion sizes. Look at the portion sizes.

You could even have walnuts. Look at the portion sizes on the Harvard list at kidneystonediet.com start page and you'll see you'll see the portion sizes that you can have. Get your calcium every single day.

I can't tell you how important it is to get your calcium every single day. Plus, people, you have a skeleton that you need to feed, so it's important that you're getting sources of calcium. It does not have to be dairy, you can get it from non-dairy sources that well as well.

I also have a great free article—all these things are free, of course, I'm pointing out—on my blog, kidneystonediet.com blog, you're going to see non-dairy sources to get your calcium, something like that, one article. It has a bunch of cows on it, I love that article. And that's what those are non-dairy ways to get calcium.

You don't have to use dairy if you don't use dairy.

Yeah, we also have a full episode earlier in the season, all about that. So, if you go back, if you're already subscribed, you can just swipe up in your app or check out the rest of the YouTube channel, the playlist there where you'll find I wish I remembered the name of it off hand, but yeah, we dove into calcium. We've we've talked about calcium quite a bit, but yeah, we have some deep dives there as well, so yeah, and be sure to check out kidneystonediet.com to find all those resources that Jill mentioned.

So, yeah, I think that's a good place to wrap for this week.

That was great, Candi! I love that question, I loved it.

Yeah, and if you have a question of your own, the phone number is 773-789-8763 and we will feature your voicemail in a future episode of the show. So, thanks again for listening and we will see you one week from today.

Okay, and everybody give your pets an extra hug and an extra kiss from Jeff and Jill today, okay? So, this is the pet episode.

Yeah, there you go.

And, you know what? Even Yeah, it's the pet episode, and if you want to do a shout out to your pet in the comments, God, nothing makes me happier! Let's do it, people.

On the Facebook page, I'm always like, "I'm having a bad day, so show some pictures of pets," and there'll be, like, hundreds of them. I love that, nothing makes me happier. So, and if you don't have a pet, shout out your kids name, I'll send them a heart, why not?

Yeah.

Yeah, and on the Facebook group, it is there's a lot of the Facebook the Facebook group is the Kidney Stone Prevention Group, if you want to find it. It's another free resource, but, yeah, there's a lot of kidney stone talk, but then, just the fun, yeah, pet talk and other things, as well, 'cause there's so much more to life than just the one thing.

Look, when I was going through my cancer, I really like to laugh when I'm going through adversity in my life, and so you may say, "Well, that's the un-funniest time of your life," but, I mean, you've you got to make fun of things, you've got to laugh, so there's some people that are like, "We're talking about our kidney stones, why's she putting funnies on here?" Because you know what, when you've when you've been sick or when you're going through hard times, laughter really is the best medicine.

I know it's so cliché, but it's got me through so much in my life, so, man, life is hard, you got to laugh, too. You got to be fun, you got to have laugh, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, thanks again for listening, and we will talk to you next time.

Bye, guys, thanks, Candi!