Chicken, Fish or Red Meat: Which Is Best for Kidney Stones?

Chicken, fish, or red meat, which is best for kidney stones? Let's talk about that.

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.

All righty. So, we're getting into the good stuff. All that all the meat protein, what we can do, what we can have, what's best for kidney stone prevention when it comes to all the different types of meat?

Here's something. I love sharing with the audience very common things that I hear about all the time. Daily, daily, daily.

When I say all the time, I mean daily. Here's one. During a private consult with me,

We talk about meat. A lot of people come to me because they've been doing keto or paleo, and now they're making kidney stones. And when I look at how much protein they had that day, it's a lot.

And so, and they tell me, "I'm on keto, I'm doing paleo." And some of them tell me, "Look, I was doing plants and then I heard somebody on the internet say, 'Go do keto' and I still made stones!"

Well, it doesn't matter. If you're eating too much oxalate on a plant-based diet, you're eating too much meat on a carnivore, paleo, keto diet, you can make stones. Many different diets that are out there increase your stone risk, okay?

So, now,

When people tell me, they're like, "Okay, so how much you know, what kind of What meat are you eating?" "Well, I don't I don't I never eat red meat, okay?" And so Wait, how does it go? I'm telling you this happens every day, and now I'm forgetting.

I mean, I You can't make this up, folks. What kind of expert are you, lady?

Well, no, you talk about this all day, every day with so many people.

Yeah, but I'm Obviously, I'm having trouble. I'm having a senior moment.

No, no. Well, yeah, it's all good. But like words sometimes just sort of blend together because, yeah, there's There's a lot here to dive into and talk about.

He's so nice to me, folks. Do you see how kind he is? He's like, "Oh my god, she's screwing up again." Here's what I'm trying to say.

People my age will say, "Well, I—" Oh, here's what I'm trying to say, "Jill, I don't eat meat." And then I'll take a diet intake for, "Well, I have chicken and I have turkey." I said, "You said you didn't eat meat." "Well, I don't eat red meat!" And I'm like meat is meat. Chicken is meat. Turkey is meat.

Fish is considered meat, right?

And so, people my generation, we were told back in the day, "Get rid of red meat because you'll have a heart attack if you eat too much," okay? And so, we don't We don't consider chicken and turkey and fish, we don't consider that meat! The people that were are that are talking to me everyday are like, "Well, I don't eat red meat," but meat is meat, folks, okay?

So, too much seafood, too much fish, too much chicken, too much turkey, that they're it's all considered meat. And so, there is not one that is better than the other. Now, of course, if you have heart disease, you know, your saturated fat that can be in all of these things, may bother you, so your doctor may have told you to pay attention to that, okay?

I typically, I do eat meat. I eat very lean meat. 99% lean ground turkey I eat.

I, once in a while, because I have naturally high cholesterol, I, once in a while, have 96% ground beef. So, I eat very lean meat because I'm paying attention to my saturated fat, because when I have more, it increases my LDL.

Okay, so there's no one is better than the other unless you have other medical conditions that say you shouldn't have fatty meat. But, as far the far as the Kidney Stone Diet goes, we want you to pay attention to the amount of meat protein, which are all the things we just talked about, pork would be in there, too, obviously,

Because too much meat protein can increase your kidney stone risk because too much meat protein can lower your urine citrate. You know these values because you have done a 24-hour urine collection, and you can look at your values. You won't know these values unless you've done a 24-hour urine collection.

If your doctor has not told you to do one of those, please ask for one.

Otherwise, you don't know why you're forming stones, and you can have some urine abnormalities on there that you have no idea and you're just worried about spinach when there's a whole slew of reasons you're forming kidney stones. So, when we eat too much meat protein, for those of us who are prone to kidney stones, it can lower your citrate level.

A very low citrate level can cause calcium oxalate stones, it can also cause uric acid stones. It can also lower your urine pH and make your urine too acidic, and calcium oxalate stones and uric acid stones love an acidic urine. And pretty much anything lower than 5.8 is getting too acidic, okay?

It can also What does it also do? Oh, duh, it can also increase your uric acid, and that's why some of you are making uric acid stones, coupled with low urine volume. So, some of you will have a high saturation of uric acid crystals in your urine, and that happens for many different reasons, but one of the dietary reasons is eating too much meat protein

And not drinking enough fluids. So, also eating too much meat can increase urine calcium, which we're always trying to make sure it doesn't happen for kidney stone formers. This is a very common reason you are forming kidney stones, and you don't know this, you've just been told to go suck a lemon from your medical people, and that's not doing anything for you.

In order to find out why you're making kidney stones—I know I'll be saying this on my deathbed, "I love you, Nate. And please get a 24-hour urine collection." It is that important. Again, you're not going to know why you're forming kidney stones until you have that.

So, these are reasons we don't want to tell you to eat zero meat. Meat works for a lot of people, including myself. It's an easy way to get protein needs met,

Okay? But the amount of protein you're getting from just meat needs to be paid attention to. We have the meat protein calculator on our website at kidneystonediet.com.

A lot of articles on meat and how it plays a part in kidney stone prevention, so you can find out how much meat protein that a range for you on the protein calculator at kidneystonediet.com.

And I also have an article, total amount of protein, you know, you need more protein than just the meat limitation, so I get mine from dairy and nondairy vegetarian ways, like peas and lentils, so many great ways that are low oxalate and still really giving you good protein from plant and fiber.

So, we do have that limitation, as far as don't overeat meat, so you're going to you're going to see that paleo and carnivore are not going to work for you if you're a kidney stone former. And did I miss anything, Jeff? I think that's it.

Yeah, I think that covered everything. I mean, especially with the website having the protein calculator, and all the details there, it's super valuable. You can find everything that you need to follow the Kidney Stone Diet, learn all the goals, absolutely everything right at kidneystonediet.com.

And you can work directly with Jill. She works with a small number of patients every month. And you can find all of those details at the website.

I think with that, we'll wrap, and we'll see you next week.

Thanks for being here, everybody. Thank you so much. Bye, bye!