A listener asks if she should adjust her Kidney Stone Diet while taking medication for kidney stones. She has high urine calcium and has been prescribed a diuretic to lower it, but she’s concerned about her low blood pressure. Jill discusses the options for adjusting the diet and medication, including lowering the dose, trying a different diuretic, or increasing sodium intake. She emphasizes the importance of following the Kidney Stone Diet and the positive impact it can have on overall health. They also highlight the free resources available to help people prevent kidney stones.
Takeaways
- Adjusting the Kidney Stone Diet may be necessary when taking medication for kidney stones.
- Consult with a doctor to determine the best approach for adjusting the diet and medication.
- Increasing sodium intake may be beneficial for those experiencing low blood pressure while on diuretics.
- Following the Kidney Stone Diet can have positive effects on overall health and prevent kidney stone formation.
- Free resources and support are available to help individuals prevent kidney stones.
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction and Listener Question
- 02:26 Adjusting the Kidney Stone Diet with Medication
- 04:13 Managing Low Blood Pressure on Diuretics
- 07:36 The Importance of Following the Kidney Stone Diet
- 09:26 Free Resources for Kidney Stone Prevention
So you’re on the Kidney Stone Diet, but you’re also on medication. Does that change things? Let’s talk about it.
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. We’re still with each other. We’re doing a batch. Yeah. And it’s nice to be in in -person too. We don’t get to do it all that often, but we need to do this more, I think, the in -person stuff. We always say that, but it’s hard because we have hard schedules. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, I want to figure out a way to make it happen. But this week we’re back with another listener question. We had a voice memo.
So if you have a question, the number is 773 -789 -8763. You can leave a voicemail. Or if you’re outside the US, you can send a voice memo. Just email podcast at kidneystonediet .com and we will answer it on the show. Yeah, we love listener questions. Yeah, it’s awesome. So today we have a question from Diane. Hello Jill and Jeff.
My name is Diane and I’m calling from Pennsylvania. Thank you both very much for the fantastic work that you do for us. I’ve been dealing with kidney stones for years and this is the first time I’ve received solid advice. My question concerns whether we should adjust our Kidney Stone Diet if we are taking medication for kidney stones. I had done a urine analysis consultation with Jill.
Jill guided me on what I could be asking my nephrologist. So that has guided me in getting the treatment that I need. I have idiopathic hypercalceria. I follow the Kidney Stone Diet well. My urine calcium has decreased through the diet, but not enough to be not forming stones.
I have a normal blood pressure, but I’ve been prescribed a diuretic to lower my urine calcium. I’m a little bit concerned about my blood pressure dropping too much. So I didn’t know if I should be adjusting my daily fluid intake or my salt intake or something else, since I would be taking a diuretic. And perhaps, you know, of other situations where the diet should be adjusted for other medications. So that would kind of be my general question.
But I thank you again for all that you guys do. You have made me healthier not only for preventing kidney stones, but my overall health. Very grateful to you. Thank you again. Bye bye. Okay, Diane. Diane wants to know. This is it. Hi, Diane. We had a great conversation. Hello.
That was funny. It was funny because I didn’t expect that. So I made it extra extra. All right. So Diane wants to know she’s taking a diuretic. She has high urine calcium. We met. She changed her diet.
She lowered her salt, she lowered her added sugar, she’s eating the Kidney Stone Diet and this will happen with some of you so listen up. You do a great job changing things around. You are following the Kidney Stone Diet, you’re all excited to do your follow up test, you’re trying to get your urine calcium down because it’s very common that kidney stone formers have high urine calcium.
Medically, this is known as hypercalchuria. That’s a big friggin’ fancy name, hyper too much cal, calcium urea in the urine. High urine calcium. And so she’s trying everything she can. She does the follow up and she’s like, hey, I still have high urine calcium. So the doctor puts her on a diuretic and Dapamide and this will help lower her urine calcium.
Her question is, listen, my blood pressure already runs a little low. A lot of my patients have this question. Now what do I do? Do I eat more salt? So Diane’s asking, should I change the diet a little bit?
Basically, what I think she’s asking, she didn’t say this specifically, but I’m thinking she’s asking, does this mean, not because she wants more salt, but because she’s worried about the low blood pressure, should I have a little bit more salt to combat that low blood pressure? I would do it this way. Number one, it depends on a couple things. Number one.
If your dose of the blood pressure medication, the diuretic, these diuretics are used to lower urine calcium, but they’re also used for high blood pressure. Just so happens that it can help lower urine calcium. So.
She can ask the doctor, Dear Doc, if she is experiencing dizziness or really low blood pressure that’s causing her symptoms, Dear Doctor, I am on a low -salt diet. I am on the medication you gave me. Can we lower the dose? Start there. Jill, it’s already the lowest dose. All right. If it’s the lowest dose, you can ask the doctor, number one, should I try a different diuretic?
I’m having some side effects from this. Or ask the doctor, should I increase my sodium a little bit? I’m going to tell you guys, don’t increase added sugar, please, especially if you’re a diabetic. So that would be no. But ask the doctor, can I increase my sodium a little bit? Would that be beneficial for me? So those are the two ways to approach that question. Some of you.
will not be able to use the diuretics. You already are really healthy. You just happen to have a kidney stone because you have idiopathic hypercalceria, which just means you’re doing everything right. You just have a genetic thing that’s making your calcium high, and it’s putting you at risk for bone disease and kidney stone disease. In that case, you go on a diuretic. Some people, a handful of people that I’ve worked with over the last 25 years, almost 26 now, have the diuretics.
have given them too many symptoms or they didn’t help actually. So at that point you really the doctor you’ll have that discussion with your doctor. I’m not going to give you medical advice on that here, but you will have that discussion with the doctor and the doctor may say you have to go of course follow the diet the Kidney Stone Diet, but
We’re not going to give you a medication. We’re going to do our best managing it through diet, extra fluids. Maybe they’ll put you on potassium citrate that will help with the extra urine calcium. It’s complicated, folks. That’s why I’m not going to go into it on a YouTube channel. But you will have that discussion with the doctor because then it becomes a different thing. We want to make sure you don’t have side effects of high blood pressure.
We wanna make sure you do not get more kidney stones, and so that’s a discussion for the doctor. I will say, Jeff, though, I do have patients that cannot take the diuretics. They do still have high urine calcium, and they are still not making new stones, or current stones are not getting larger because they’re following the diet. So just by making sure you’re getting enough fluids.
Just that alone is going to help you so much. So the diet is always a concept. of course she’s going to say that. But it is. I mean, and Diane said, it’s just healthy. I’ve just gained all kinds of health from it. So a lot of my diabetics are A1Cs. We’ll go back down. They’re off their blood pressure medications. They lose weight. It’s not a miracle. We’re not talking about a miracle thing here. We’re talking about
eating less sugar and added salt and being responsible for how you feed your body and how you move your body. Now that doesn’t go that I don’t want to ever seem dismissive. There are people that have issues why they’re gaining weight, why they can’t get it off. It’s every person I’ve worked with has always been able to lose weight if they’ve worked really hard at that. But that doesn’t mean there’s not people out there.
that have a really hard time losing weight. There are. So I just I’m very careful. I don’t want to be dismissive of that. OK. But the Kidney Stone Diet is just a healthy diet. Lowering salt, lowering ed, eating foods within portion size, all of that stuff, moving your body. So Diane knows what time it is. We work together. So she knows. And so she’ll have that conversation with her doctor and we’ll go from there. I’m sure I’ll hear back from her and I’ll know. Yeah. And about
how, of course, you’d recommend the diet. That’s the thing too. It’s right on the homepage. We have dozens of specific Kidney Stone Diet podcast episodes, YouTube videos, all of this. It’s completely free. It’s a healthy diet. You can learn that and you can dive deep if you want to. There’s a course. There’s working with Jill directly through group coaching. There’s so much more, but there is no gate keeping for the diet. All of the diet goals and the advice.
free for everyone and we want that to spread as far as possible because the thousands of patients 25 plus years, you know, it works. That’s the whole thing I know it works. I know it works and you and also we have a whole page on it’s called praise I think that’s what it’s called on the website. There’s so many testimonials pictures you name it I’m not making this stuff up Jeff’s not making it up. It works I couldn’t dedicate my whole nursing career if it didn’t work. It would be a very unsatisfying career and I would be extremely unsuccessful
So the reason I say this a lot, the reason I’m so successful is number one, I’ve had the world’s greatest mentor, Dr. Fred Coe, C -O -E, you can go to his website at University of Chicago and Fred Coe, C -O -E. I say C -O -E because everyone always thinks I’m saying Cole, it’s not. And the other reason I’m so successful is because my patients have a really important why. They don’t want to make another kidney stone, they don’t want to be sick again and they really work hard.
So my success is because of my patience. I’m giving out information. We give out information. And I would add, too, that you care. I know. That’s the thing. I do. You won’t say it, but this is everything. This means the world to you. And it shows. Everyone knows this. Yeah, it does. But that’s important, because there is no, you’re not here to make a quick buck. This isn’t like, this is 25 years in the making. This is literally, how can we reach more people?
Yeah, and also I like spending our time on doing free things for people because not everybody could afford stuff. So it’s really important that we continue with this show. We just taped our 200th one a couple shows ago. I mean, we do all these free things. The meat protein calculator Jeff made, all the free handouts on that website. There’s so much free stuff, useful stuff. The searchable oxalate list.
We do all that because not everyone can afford to pay, even though there’s so many services that are inexpensive. Some people are going truly paycheck to paycheck and can’t even afford their groceries. Things are really bad. So we appreciate that. I’m a patient myself with my own illness. So I know how money is. It’s just really important. So we dedicate ourselves on doing as much free stuff, if not more than putting our heart and soul in paid services, not.
Not to mean that I don’t pour my heart and soul into paid services, but I do. But I’m just saying I pour my heart and soul. And so does he behind the scenes. He’s coding and doing all the things we pour our heart and soul. And David to my beautiful Dave, who does all the things beautiful on the Web site. I’m just saying I want you guys to take this seriously because I don’t want you to be sick. And you can not be sick if you put our words.
and what we’re giving you all these tools. Put them into action. Just don’t collect them. Don’t say, I read for you or nothing happened. You gotta act. You gotta do. You gotta do. You gotta do to get the results. And a lot of people can sometimes think that researching something or looking at materials or listening to podcasts, they’re great, but you have to do something with the things that we’re asking you to do or the things that we’re trying to teach you. So there’s not a person I haven’t worked with that.
hasn’t succeeded and you can too. There’s nothing special about us living healthy lives. It’s a lot of work and that’s what the diet industry doesn’t tell you too. But anyway, I digress. Get to work, listen to what we’re talking about, put it into action and you too can get help. And also Diane, talk to your doctor about what we just discussed and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Yeah, thanks again for your call and.
We’ll see you next week. YouTube thinks you might like this one or that one. Not sure which side still, but see you. Thanks, Diane.
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