Are supplements safe for kidney stone formers?

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 I'm here, as always, with our resident kidney stone prevention expert, Jill Harris.

Hello, Jeff.

So, we're onto our, actually, our third episode right now. We're batching all these together to, to be more effective, make sure we can get one rolling every week. So, what do you say we just dive right in?

Okay, let's go.

So, supplements. Supplements are a big question when it comes to just health in general. Are supplements safe when someone has kidney stones?

And like what do you, what do you recommend?

Well, a lot of people don't like what I personally have to say about supplements. I believe that supplements should be used when a blood test tells you are deficient in something. That's my take on supplements.

So you would think, "Boy, Jill probably takes a lot of supplements with,

Although she's in remission, she has been diagnosed with stage four cancer." You think I'd be doing all kinds of crazy things. I don't believe in them. They're not highly regulated at all.

They're a lot of money. Most people who take supplements do not need them. I'm always going to go back to health and fitness because I'm really annoying that way.

If you're eating a well-balanced diet, why should I need a supplement? Now, people have medical conditions that maybe they don't absorb certain minerals and vitamins, so they may need help, but you should ask your doctor for a blood test to see if you are deficient in certain things. Your naturopath can help, too,

And see is it warranted. Don't be going to the Walgreens or CVS. Please don't.

Or Duane Reade or wherever you live. Don't be going into the dime store and just thinking any kind of supplement is going to work for you. You may be, and literally, peeing out lots of money, okay?

Plus, by the way, and there's this,

You don't absorb things from vitamins as well as you will from food. So, I'm I'm a big, boring advocate in really trying to get your nutrition needs met through food. I know that you all want something quick and painless, but it I'm not a big supplement fan.

Vitamin D Deficiency and Calcium Absorption

Now,

Specifically for kidney stone disease, you should have a few things checked. Is your vitamin D where it needs to be? You can check that from a blood test.

It's very important. If you're low in vitamin D, which living in Chicago, I do have to take a vitamin D supplement because I'm low in it

All the time. So that's important. When you don't have enough vitamin D, you will not absorb calcium, and your bones need calcium.

Also, for stone disease, you want to make sure your calcium remains in your bone and you don't have a lot floating around that could increase your stone risk. So, vitamin D supplementation may be needed for you. You'll know if you need it by taking a blood test.

Now,

Here's a common scenario. Look. Here's a common scenario.

You are very low. Sally comes to me and she said, "Look, my doctor put me on vitamin D because I was very deficient in it, and the doctor put me on a very high dose of vitamin D, 50,000 IU, international units."

Okay, well, did the doctor recheck after a couple months? Was your vitamin D level rechecked? "No, they never did, and I didn't know to get it rechecked." So, now the patient is on an extremely high level of vitamin D.

It was a level that was used to hurry up and get her vitamin D back in the body, but was never taken off, and now it just becomes the regular dose month after month.

Now the patient is over absorbing calcium, and that's not good, either. So, again, if you're put on vitamin D because you're very low in it, that's awesome. Get that taken care of and then, remember, most doctors are quite good at this and they'll say, "Remember, Timmy, get back in here so we can take a blood test to see if you're at an appropriate level.

If you are, we will then put you on a maintenance dose.

If you aren't, we'll keep you on a little higher dose and keep monitoring." But it has to be monitored, so you have to get your tush in there to get a follow-up blood test to see where you are, okay? So, if your doctor doesn't remind you, most will, but if the doctor doesn't, be your own best advocate and make sure you get in there to get it retested.

The other thing is for vitamin C,

You know, cold and cough season, corona, studies show that getting higher doses of vitamin C can help your immunity. So, people do that. In excess of 2000 milligrams a day of vitamin C, it can convert over to oxalate.

Some recent studies even say lower supplementation of vitamin C can increase oxalate. So,

You know, be careful with that. You want to increase your immunity? Here's what you do.

I'm not winning no fans saying it, I don't care. Get some sleep! Eat well!

Move! Hydrate! Wear a mask!

Stay away from sick people! That's how you get your immunity functioning well, okay? Also, you taking a vitamin C pill one night don't mean you're immune from everything the next day, okay?

You have to build up these things. You're not going to have a good night's sleep and your immune system is kicked up all the way for the next day. This takes work.

It takes time, okay?

So, if you want to make sure you have a really healthy immune system, ditch the pills, unless a doctor has talked to you to take them. You may have other medical conditions that lower your vitamin C level. You may need supplements.

My point is always going to be check with your doctor. Do you need these supplements? When do they get to an effective dose for you?

Be proactive in getting your blood monitored to make sure

That you're cool. Just don't willy-nilly go spend all your money on supplements, you may not need them, or you may be doing yourself more harm. It's very important.

Yeah, and we intrinsically, we sort of have this all-or-nothing approach, I think, or a lot of us. Maybe not everyone, but.

A lot of people do. A lot of people do, yeah.

Yeah, like and you've said in the past that like more healthy food isn't necessarily better and it comes down to supplements, too.

Jeff, I say it all the time, man. More doesn't mean better, or sometimes less doesn't mean better. "Jill said to go to 1500 milligrams of salt.

I'm going to a 400." That's it. Please don't do that, you'll pass out. You do need salt.

So, my point is you get goals. More ain't better, less ain't better, so you got to you got to talk to somebody, too, that can help you navigate this. Spinach and almonds, they said it's healthy, I'm going to have more and more.

Now you have a stone.

More healthy food doesn't necessarily mean more health, as all my stoners have found out. Yeah, so thanks for bringing that point up, it's true.

Yeah, and now with, they aren't specifically supplements, but probiotics and prebiotics. They're They sort of fit in the supplement category, but they're not vitamins. They're something for the gut.

Is there a particular outlook on probiotics and prebiotics when it comes to kidney stones?

Well, yeah, kidney stone. So, there's research out there that will say, "Look, we know that We know that pro- probiotics are designed to degrade oxalate and help your microbiome," okay? But the research, it doesn't So, they're looking at this, but there's really no hard evidence that says that's going to help lower oxalate levels, okay?

So,

There's still out on that. There's, you know, there's some pills and supplements out there that says, "Oh, we're going to lower your oxalate if you take this pill. It's going to affect the oxalate, how you're absorbing it and everything else." Look, there's not enough clinical evidence to really go with that.

Am I a fan in general of prebiotics and probiotics? Again, I'm going to say change your diet,

Lowering your sugar in your diet is really going to help your microbiome, your gut flora. Too much sugar leads to inflammation. So, I'm going to always say start with diet.

Then, some people who have chronic Crohn's disease, bowel disease, IBD, IBS, they could be being put on prebiotics, which is which are pills to feed, you know, the probiotics. So, it helps the probiotics feed your microbiome. So, all this stuff

Can help, but make sure you need it. But nothing can help you unless, again, you have a healthy diet. So, that's very important.

Some of the products out there, too, to lower oxalate, it will say It will say, "Take this enzyme. This will lower oxalate in your body." It hasn't been proven with humans yet, okay? Also, that same pill bottle is going to say, "Eat a low oxalate diet."

So, it's very important that you all understand it doesn't get away from the diet changes. None of it does. None of it gets you away from the dietary changes.

People who are put on medications for stone disease will say, "Jill, you know, I'm just going to take this pill, I don't want to lower my salt." Well, guess what, Susan? That pill don't work unless you work it, you lower your salt, anyway. Guys,

Please, if you take one thing from me, I always say if you take one thing, I got a lot of things, I know. But if you if you if you change your diet, in a lot of cases, you don't have to take medications. So, you can take that enzyme to try to lower your oxalate, which doesn't have enough clinical proof yet.

You could, it's on the market, but

You still have to lower your the foods you're eating that's the highest, which is just a handful of high-oxalate foods. It ain't changing your whole diet with oxalate. You have other things to do with diet, but the oxalate part, again, is really a very minimal part.

So, prebiotics and probiotics, eh, not enough research, not enough clinical significance to show that they help in stone disease, although

They could be helpful if you have chronic bowel diseases or there's malabsorption issues, and medical professionals could absolutely say help this. It's not necessarily going to help kidney stone disease, but it could help other things. But starting with diet first and then perhaps adding the pre and probiotics is a whole package, diet first, always diet first.

People say, " it's natural. These pills say they're natural." Ain't nothing more natural than changing your diet, people!

That's natural, that's natural. Don't be telling me pills and supplements are natural, they're not. Dietary changes are natural.

That's what I'm an advocate of, always will, okay? But I'm not saying there's not room for that in one's diet if a medical professional says you should also do this, okay?

Yeah. Yeah, it comes back to the diagnostics, just like we talked about in the last episode with the 24-hour urine collection. It's if the test says you need it, then that's the reason to have someone like a doctor prescribe it, but we can't just make all these assumptions just based on maybe some blog posts or even YouTube videos that people are watching that someone's saying, "Oh, you need more X." Like, we're all different.

We all need different things.

Yes, and here's the thing, Jeff, who's putting money in their pockets from saying take that? There's a lot of people who will say take this supplement. They give you a coupon code.

These pay these companies have come to me. "Jill, here's a supplement. Tell your You got a very loyal following.

Tell your stone formers to take this, number one, and here's the discount code to give them, and that code you get to pocket, sister."

So, for every bottle you sell, you get 30%. I've never taken it. Why?

Because I don't know if those patients need those pills, because they haven't done a urine collection. If I tell my patients to take those pills, I have thousands of followers, they'll take them just because Jill said it. But why do they believe me?

Because I don't do things like that. That's why people trust me. So, I could have retired a million years ago by doing things like that.

I'll never do it.

You don't know if you need that. Here's why. I get very excited about this.

Not in a good way excited. I won't do it, either, because then Billy Joe takes those pills, Billy Joe thinks he's doing everything he needs to do. "I'm on Jill's pills.

I'm never going to make another stone." So,

He doesn't change his diet and then he starts making new stones. That's That's everything I'm against. That's what my whole career is based on, you not making more stones.

So, when you start taking supplements, you think that's all you need to do, it's not. You still have to change your diet, end of story. There's no supplement that's going to make you stop forming stones without also changing fluid and diet.

That's it. Don't buy into the bull-doo, don't, don't.

I love the "bull-doo." I like that.

Because there's so much bull-doo in the diet industry, so, you know, there's just a lot of it. It comes to my goal is to sprinkle some common sense onto everyone's plate. So, I'm selling common sense.

I'm selling common sense. It's not a quick fix, but it's a fix in most cases. Up to 80% of new stones we can eradicate that high a percentage of recurrence of stones.

So, and there's there's people that will always make stones because they have other medical conditions, but I'm I'm selling you common sense. And when you really learn how to change your diet, whether it's for kidney stone disease, diabetes, hypertension, weight loss, whatever it is, you can breathe a sigh of relief and you can understand there's a lot more you can eat and even treats, you can work all of it in.

It's common sense, it's everything within moderation. That don't sell no books, though,

Okay? So, but that's what this comes down to.

Yeah.

There's no hook. There's no hook here. It's just common sense and being rational about how you look at food, portion size, which nobody Everybody wants the diet where they can eat whatever the hell they want.

They just don't eat a piece of bread, but everything else they can eat. I get a lot of them as stone formers, okay? It's not good common sense to do diets that way.

Go ahead, go ahead, what were you going to say?

Well, and I think it's important, like you said, that supplement companies, people where there's a financial vested interest in getting their product in front of many people, they approach people like you all the time. Like anyone who has a following, like the influencer is the new marketer, and that is so, 'cause I could see like we're doing this podcast, it's free.

You do so much free content, but we do mention the course, we mention the things that you do charge for, but

I hope people I hope that can even sort of share that the reason we talk about it is because we're not talking about anything else. We're not we're not promoting things that people are giving us a kickback for. This is purely your education, your one-on-one consults with people, the things that you are in control of and you know this is going to help them, and that's why we talk about it.

Why we mention in every episode, I mention the Kidney Stone Diet, to go to kidneystonediet.com, to subscribe to the podcast, to

Share it with people, because we just want to get the word out for genuine, genuinely helpful information.

Yeah, look, the thing I deal with on a day-to-day basis for 21 years is people didn't know there was help out there. No one gave them, no one showed them the help, and I've just been on the internet doing this for the last couple years, so, you know, I've been doing this privately, I didn't I didn't go on social media and stuff like that to promote what I was doing.

So, people didn't know, and now that you can search for me, it's out there. The other reason, and I have to say this,

The other reason I don't promote much except dietary changes, because number one, they work, in most cases, and number two, I have to live with myself and I have to sleep with myself every night. The reason I mean I'm a nurse, and I want to help people. It's very important to me.

So, by giving them

Rational, common sense ways to approach diet, because everybody has their own way they think it works, meaning patients, because there's so much, again, just to lower weight, there's so much crap out there on how to do that. So, I bring everything back down to basics. We need to lower sugar.

We need to lower salt. What is this, what am I, a freaking genius? If you eat too much sugar and salt, you're eating junky food, okay?

Vegetables are not laden with sugar and salt, so I'm asking people to eat more

Vegetables and fruits, and lower your meat consumption. You can still eat meat, you just can't eat all kinds of meat as much as you want. You know, so we need to be rational, we need to drink enough fluid, you need calcium-based foods, it doesn't have to be dairy, because you have bones and it's very helpful in stone disease, as well.

So, we're trying to get as much free information out there as possible and give people rational, common sense, everyday, practical ways, I'm a very practical person, how do we get practicality into the diet industry again. I'm trying to do it all by myself, people, and I will take on that challenge 'cause I care that much about it, and it's a lot of fun for me.

It happens to be my hobby and passion, fitness and exercise, fitness, diet, and exercise, so I mean I get to do what I love every single day. So, damn right, I'm going to give a lot of free stuff because I love doing it, so it's nothing off me, you know what I mean? So,

And a lot of people can't afford me, quite frankly. You know, I'm somebody I'm an expert in what I do, I have years of experience. So, for those people that can't afford me, I want to give away free things so people know that there are resources for them and they can have better conversations with their doctor.

That's what we're doing here, Jeff.

Yeah, that's why we're here, so yeah. Just on that note, if you want to learn more, go to kidneystonediet.com and you can check out the course, you can check out everything, you can sign up for the free email newsletter, you can download the free resources to better talk to your doctor, to figure out oxalate content of different foods if that's something that you need to do, and yeah, I think that'll that'll do it for this week.

And again, at the end of our every episode, I try to mention, but subscribe wherever you're listening right now, whether it's YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and if you know anyone who's suffering with kidney stones,

And everybody does. Everybody knows somebody, yes.

Yeah, it's so much more prevalent than I think maybe the general public would assume. There's everywhere.

The latest data shows that one in 11 people will get a kidney stone in their lifetime. That's a huge percent. That's a lot, right?

Yeah, it's so many people, but yeah, so I think we will wrap there. So, thanks again, Jill.

Thank you, Jeff.

We'll see you next episode.

Okay, bye-bye.