Does alcohol consumption increase urine 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 I am Jill Harris, and we are thrilled that you're here.

Yeah, so this week we are talking about alcohol.

Oh, wait. You So, I should say who am I? Cause say nobody ever went to the podcast before.

I'm a nurse who helps patients understand their kidney stone prevention treatment plans that their doctor, hopefully, has given them. At the very least, I teach how to prevent kidney stones through diet and lifestyle.

Yeah, yeah. And you're the founder of the Kidney Stone Diet, hence the name of the podcast, or founder, creator, however we want to however we want to phrase that. But yeah, so let's dive right into this episode.

We are talking about alcohol today. So, someone asked

Alcohol, yay! Okay.

Yeah. Someone asked, "Is it true that even very mild alcohol consumption can dramatically up levels of urine calcium?"

Nah! No! Silly!

No.

Those are my favorite answers. Okay, so that's all for today.

Goodbye! And that's it, folks. No, so here's I think it's a great question.

Alcohol. Did you guys know that alcohol can even decrease your kidney stone risk? Now, before you go running to your liquor store,

Let me explain what that means. So, there's been studies and I have an article on my mentor's site, Dr. Co, C-O-E, and there's an article called A Variety of Fluids or some such thing like that.

Anyway, A Thirst for Variety, thank God for you, Jeff, and your youth. Okay. So, A Thirst for Variety.

And in that, there is a study that we talk about and it the study showed that

Diet soda, beer, wine, booze in general will lower your stone risk. Why is that, old wise one? Well, that is simply because you're drinking the fluids!

So, you have to be careful when you read studies because, you know, you can read it exactly how you want to read it. So, for somebody who really likes to drink, they're like, "Dang, yeah, I'm going to go get a six pack right now." But that's really not what it's saying. It's like, look, a beer or two, a glass of wine or two, it's going to add to your daily

Fluid volume, but you know, if you keep drinking that winds up dehydrating you. Not only that, I always tell my patients that are like, "What about booze?" I don't have a problem with booze. I like to have a drink here and there, for sure.

Life is short, enjoy. But nobody ever makes the wisest choices after they've had something or a lot to drink. No one's ever like, "Oh my God, I am drunk.

Get me a kale salad, Susie, will you?" No! We're running to the local burrito place or a hot dog or a hand–shit, we're eating shitty food. So, when we don't control, when we when we get a little bit out of control with booze, we're not making great lifestyle choices, no matter if it's getting behind the car, the wheel of a car or food or whatever.

So, and also, typically, when we're drinking, most people, maybe some of my kidney stone formers,

But most people are not like having a drink and then having a glass of water and having a drink and having more water. Somewhere along the line, the more drinks you have, you're going to forget about that water. So, it's just overall it's not affecting your urine calcium levels.

What it would do though, too much alcohol, would increase your uric acid levels, and also, it dehydrates you. So, those are the reasons that we worry about it. And again, my little take on it is nobody's making great food choices after they're buzzed.

So, you know.

Yeah, definitely. And uric acid, then, is sort of the counterpart to oxalate for oxalate stones, correct?

Well, too much uric acid can produce uric acid stones, so that's a problem. And, you know, that's more of more of that because alcohol, like beer, will have purines in it, and that increases your ur– uric acid production, and that can increase your uric acid stone risk. So, there's that.

Yeah, so it's similar to too much protein, too much animal protein with the purines.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But with meat protein, too much animal meat protein, that can also tip you over to calcium oxalate stones, because the meat– the meat will increase too much calcium,

Too. So, it's, you know, it gets complicated.

Yeah, it definitely does. So in terms of fluid consumption, then, so, you know,

Let me make that better. I don't like that. Hold on.

So, if you eat too much meat, okay, your pH will go lower, and what happens is, the body will release calcium as a buffer to get your pH not so low. And so, that's where you lose some calcium, so you'll have excess calcium floating around, too, which can lead to the calcium oxalate stones. But booze does not do that as far as the calcium thing.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah.

Interesting. So, in terms of fluids, then, about how much should people be getting on a daily basis?

Yeah, fluids, not beer and wine, people. Fluids. You want to be drinking, yeah, you want to be drinking, you know, about 2.5 to 3 L a day.

That typically gets you to your 2.5 to 3 L of urine a day, typically. But that all depends, too. How much salt you're eating?

How much sugar you're eating? Do you sweat a lot? Do you live in a hot climate?

All kinds of things. But typically, between 2.5 to 3 L of fluid– all fluids count, water's best– is what we would like to see patients, do each day, best that they can.

Yeah, so I think that's a great recap and then really dives in to let people know about alcohol because I know that is it's generally just a concern that people have. So, I mentioned this in the last episode, but we just launched a brand new service called, Kidney Stone Diet Meal Plans where you can find inspiration for your next meal for your, week of week of eating and following the Kidney Stone Diet.

So, if you're interested, this is still just a just a thing that we are promoting through the podcast as we're doing a little soft launch and getting more and more recipes out there and sharing this with you guys, if you're interested, be sure to head over to kidneystonediet.com. You'll see a link right there on the homepage where you can click and learn more about meal plans.

So, I think that's it for this week, Jill.

Well, I, well, cheers!

Yeah.

Cheers to this week's episode!

Yeah, cheers, guys. We'll see you next time.

Bye, guys.