Can I eat bread if I’m a kidney stone former?

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. Hello, Jeff.

Hey, so we're here with another podcast another listener question this week. What you up to over there? Looks like you're jotting something down.

Yeah, I am just making sure I have my ducks in a row here on things I want to say going forward, not in this, cause I don't know what you're asking me, but

Yeah, just yeah

Next video we do I'm I'm I'm going to pose a question, anyway.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, because there's always there's great questions from the community, but also there's things that like what is the Kidney Stone Diet, we realized, oh, we're like 50 episodes in, we hadn't done that complete episode yet. So,

Yeah.

Yeah, we're going to be peppering back in some of the some of the just core fundamental things that maybe we've missed so far. But, yeah, we're going to have a question today. So, this is from Pam, from the Facebook group.

Pam, from the Facebook group, yes.

And we're back.

Little

Just a little technical difficulty right there, but

What are you going to do?

Yeah, now we're on to the question from Pam.

All right, Pam.

Pam ain't there.

No, she's not. It's not working again. I don't know why the Bluetooth isn't connecting from the

Well, I'm glad I was looking at my questions.

Yeah.

Happens to the best of us, like I said.

Yeah, it's I don't know what's going on. I wonder if I need to reboot.

Okay, well, I'm then I'm going to talk about something.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, so we'll get we'll get to Pam's question next week, so we're going to get this little technical glitch figured out. But,

Onto a different topic for this week.

Well, first of all, does everyone know I'm moving? Look at this. You see all this?

Yeah, we haven't mentioned in the podcast, but yeah, you have a big move coming. All these boxes and everything.

I mean, everybody knows what moving's like. It's terrible. So, I'm sitting here in the midst of all this chaos.

But I want to talk about bread, people, because that's what you want to talk about. So, I always want to address what you want me to address, and it has to be one of my most frequently asked questions. "Bread!

I can't have no bread no more, Jill?" I don't know where you ever got that notion from.

I don't know if we're supposed to live for the rest of our lives without a piece of bread. That's why I'm not a keto fan, or a paleo fan, when we take away all carbs. Again, I'm not a fan of taking away one food group, so we can eat as much as we want of another.

But, that being said, I'm a low carb person because of my medical stuff. So, if you need to do low carb, that's perfectly okay. But I am also here to tell you,

Bread, people, you can have it. "Jill, wheat is very high on the Harvard list." Well, it's it's on the higher side, but they measured a cup of it. You're not having a cup of wheat in that slice of bread.

Again, people, it's the portion. So, you may say, "Hey, I eat wheat bread, it's the first ingredient in a slice of bread. It says wheat." But it's not a cup of wheat,

So you don't have to worry about it. I mean, come on, how much ox can be in a piece of bread? I don't know, five 5 mg?

The point is, people, have your bread. You know what I care about mostly? I care about the sugar and the added salt in bread, that's what I care about.

So, when you're choosing bread, unless you're eating a loaf of bread a day, have a darn sandwich. It's not a problem whatsoever.

What you need to worry about is the salt and sugar in your breads, and the lack of fiber. So, sometimes I eat bread, rarely, but sometimes I do if I just have a craving, and I got to have it, and I don't care what it's going to do to my stomach, I'll have a piece of bread. But my bread, typically, I eat the no sodium Ezekiel bread because it's high fiber, zero sodium,

No sugar. I don't know if there's any sugar, maybe a gram, I don't even think a gram. Anyway, it's the best bread for me.

But if you want to eat bread, there's 27 loaves of wheat bread on your shelves at the grocery store, if you live in America. We have plenty to choose from. So, go through all those loaves, get the lowest sugar and salt, and highest fiber.

What's high fiber? Anything over, you know, 3 grams, I'm happy with that per slice, okay?

So, that's what I want you to pay attention to. What about rye? What about pumpernickel?

What about sourdough? What about French bread? What about whatever?

Doesn't matter. Just figure it has a few milligrams of oxalate. No one's worried about it.

Sometimes people are like, "Boy, you kind of glib about all this, Jill. Why are you always saying not worrying about it?" Because I know what I've been saying to patients, thousands and thousands of patients

For decades. And when I look at their follow up urine collections, they don't have an oxalate problem anymore because they gave up the very highest things like spinach, which is over 600 mg a cup. And they start getting their calcium every day, because calcium when we get enough of it, will lower your oxalate.

That's how oxalate leaves your body. It binds with calcium in your gut, and it leaves through the stool.

If you don't have any calcium in the gut at the time you had the oxalate product, oxalate cannot leave like it wants to, and it gets reabsorbed back into your body. So, it's very important that you get, that's more important than how much oxalate is in a piece of bread, is getting your daily calcium needs met. So, bread, have it.

It's not the healthiest thing in the world, especially if you're a diabetic or somebody who's glucose has glucose intolerance, right? So,

You want the highest fiber.

And gluten intolerance.

And gluten intolerance.

Gluten and glucose intolerance, too. Both, all of those things. Gluten, and if you have if you're glucose intol- intolerance, and so if you have problems regulating glucose, too, and diabetes, all of those things.

But, yes, absolutely, gluten, and that's a great point, Jeff. Make sure when you're choosing your gluten-free breads, there's two things I want you to ask: Do you need that? Are you Do you have celiac disease?

Do you really Do you really need that?

If so, when you have your gluten-free bread, watch the sugar and salt in those breads because, usually, it's a lot higher because when we take the gluten out of bread, it tastes like paper. So, they're going to flavor it more because the gluten, gluten, that's that chewy factor. Now that you've taken that away, it's not as fun to eat, so they're going to add more sugar and salt to that bread.

So, pay attention to that, too, just because something's gluten-free does not mean it's healthier than regular bread.

Of course it is if you have celiac disease, but, you know, does that make sense?

Oh, yeah, and I mean the big thing, too, with gluten-free bread is almonds. Almond flour is such a key component for many gluten-free products.

Yeah, and potato starch, another one. Rice flour, another one, and all these things are higher in oxalate, yes. But, yeah, so that's all true, but, again, so a slice is not sending anyone to a lithotripsy.

It's just not. It's what we do time over time in the portion size. Get it eat healthier bread in general.

Stick with, you know, a slice or two a day.

I don't eat anywhere near that, I eat maybe two slices of bread a month. I don't eat a lot of bread. But for those who like a sandwich, look, at the end of the day, when you're on paleo and you're on keto, the most common things I hear is, "Boy, lunch is a pain in the tush.

I can have so many salads." It's very convenient to have a sandwich for lunch, right? I think people really miss just forget about that they can't have they can't have bread, but they're like, "Damn, it's very inconvenient not to have a sandwich," because that's super easy to do. So, I just say, you know, get lettuce and make that your bun, right?

Yeah, do a lettuce wrap.

But, you know,

Yeah.

Bread, you can have. You can have bread, people, just have it. Don't worry about it.

Watch out for sugar and salt, get one that has a little added fiber, but nobody's making a kidney stone with the sandwich each day. They're just not.

Yeah, yeah, and it's that portion, not perfection. I mean, we're trying to find the best path for us right now.

Yes, yes.

So, yeah, so we'll be back with a question again next week when everything is working again. But that phone number is 773-789-8763 and we will feature your question on a future episode. And if you want to dive deeper into the Kidney Stone Diet, always as always, head over to kidneystonediet.com where you can find the Kidney Stone Prevention Course, you can find Kidney Stone Diet meal plans, you can find the free weekly newsletter, the free blog, the

Free recipes, like

Free, free, free.

So many, yeah, there's so many things on there that we want to want to help you in as many ways as we can. I mean, really, that's the that's the name of the game is we're trying to reach as many people with this knowledge to help, like we say, to reduce your risk for kidney stones kidney stones and live your best life.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a good place to wrap for this week. And if you're watching this on YouTube, we'd love a little thumbs up and leave a comment below. Let us know.

Let us know how you're doing, and like sort of where you are in your journey, as well. We love hearing from you.

Yes, and I want to hear what your favorite kind of bread is, and did you give bread up once you found out you had to be on a lower oxalate diet? Let us know in the comments.

Yeah, for sure. All right, that'll do it for this week. We'll see you next time.

Bye, guys! And, Pam, we'll get to you, we promise.