Does matcha green tea cause kidney stones?

SPYR.

Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet podcast. A show about reducing your kidney stone risk and living your best life. I'm your host and fellow student, Jeff Sarris.

And here I am, Jill Harris, your friendly little nurse about kidney stone prevention. You know, obviously, I haven't gotten my intro down. I just, you know, I don't know what to tell you.

Maybe one of the listeners can say, "Maybe, Jill, you want to try this for your intro." Give me some ideas, people, in the in the comments. Why don't you? And it's not easy.

I don't know. Anyway, go ahead, Jeff.

Yeah, that would be fun. Like, I like the thought of having the community chime in, too. Because yeah, people who are new, they don't They may find this because they look up kidney stones.

They don't know who you are or what really what this is. So, we get new people in every episode. We never know if they've been here for What are we up, 45 episodes, already?

Or maybe this is number one. So, yeah, whatever we can do to help and get people on their on their path is good.

So, normally we have call ins, we have questions and we still have more in the backlog. But, I wanted to change it up just a little bit, and I wanted to ask you a question.

Oh, god. If it's going to be hard, I'm out of here.

No, it's not going to be hard. You got this, for sure. But this is This is for my knowledge.

So, I don't know, I like a cup of coffee in the morning, and

I tend to go decaf, sort of keep the caffeine low, but lately I've sort of rediscovered matcha. And I love like matcha and green tea, and it's just it's really good. But, I haven't had it in a long time.

But, I was just thinking now, we're grinding up I'm not grinding it, it comes pre-ground, but the green tea leaves are ground up, ready to go in my drink. It's not steeping, it's my drink is the leaves.

How does How does that play out? Because tea, I know, isn't the lowest in oxalate.

Yeah, that's a great question. And I will join you in that. Luke, you better get rid of your time, it ain't time to eat.

Okay, just hold on, Jeff. He's going to be dancing around, but you can still hear me, right?

Oh, yeah, I can hear you.

Okay, hold. So, matcha. Okay, really, Luke?

Really? I mean, you know, we're doing a show, not that you care. There.

Now, he'll fall asleep for the next 10 hours. All right, so. I mean, honestly, he's just that smart.

He knows how to tell time. This happens every day at about a quarter till 4:00. Here it is, tippity toes all over.

Matcha Tea Oxalate Content and Portion Sizes

Okay.

Matcha. I'll tell you what. So, it was, and again, no one's asking me, but I'm going to tell you a little story about matcha.

They're like, "Oh god, all he did was ask a question. Shut up, I'm going to tell you a story." So, matcha. There was a couple of years ago when I would have to go downtown.

I live in Chicago, I live in Hyde Park presently, and I would have to go downtown, and there was a coffee shop called Intelligentsia. I love that coffee shop, and

Because what I was going downtown for I didn't love, I would treat myself for a matcha tea. Now, the matcha tea happens to have added sugar. But I would treat myself because I have very low added sugar in my diet, as you can imagine.

And I'm going to tell you what, Jeff. Oh, my goodness, is matcha tea delicious. Delicious!

And I would have the matcha latte. So, I'd put some calcium in there, too. And the reason I did this

Is because, yeah, I don't know, matcha hasn't been studied. But let me tell you what, a generic, you know, a study a while ago from the New En- New England Journal Medicine studied green tea. Now what?

There's 5,000,000 varieties of green tea, and whatever variety they studied, they said was low. So, here's what I say. Everybody will come to me and say, "I haven't had tea since 1972, don't worry about that, Jill."

I don't care about tea. Hold on before you start steaming some leaves. That just means any drink you want, any drink, matcha, black, Old Toms, English Breakfast, Sleepy Bear, whatever, because people will pummel me with pummel me with questions, "What about this tea?

What about this tea? What about" You think they've studied 1,000 teas? They haven't, and they're not going to.

It's very expensive to study things for oxalate, okay?

And everybody gets a little different values, so it's hard to study as well. But tea and matcha, so for matcha or any kind of tea, I'm going to say, have a true cup or two. Not Starbucks, where you need the person to help you bring it to your car, it's so big.

That ain't a cup of coffee, people. That's a gallon of coffee. Don't be doing that.

A cup, like 1952 diner. Like, look at how precious and petite I am.

That, not this. Not that, a cup. So, if you have a true cup or two of any kind of beverage, it doesn't matter.

It's what we do every single day in huge amounts, without any calcium, and all the other elements of the Kidney Stone Diet. So, if you're enjoying matcha tea, I would say absolutely have it. Have a cup or two and don't worry about it too much.

And

I would be careful, if you get 100 mg and we don't know really how much is in each of those cups, and everybody will put different amounts of crush in there, you know? So again, there's no perfect solution. If Jeff has his cup, he may be getting a little bit more oxalate than if I did, because I may put less in there.

I am putting milk in there, he may be not be, whatever. So, I would still watch my oxalate. You want to watch your oxalate for the whole day.

Most people,

After they get to their 100 goal, they're not getting more If they get their 100 goal, they don't get more than 60 or 70, because when you take away the highest foods, you don't really have to worry about it too much, honestly. So, I would say there's so many Matcha is such a beautiful thing because it's it's less caffeine, but you still get a little bippity-boop.

You know, so it's a little bippity instead of crazy.

So I think it's a wonderful tea. It's just taste delicious to me. So, for everybody listening, if you'd like tea, please bring it back.

My patients drink it in a cup or two. If the two scares you, have one. But if it's one of your favorite things, by all means, have it.

Do not steep it as long, this is not for Jeff, cuz he's not, cuz it's already it's not in a bag. He's putting the powder in his cup. But if you're worried about oxalate,

A lot of people are like, "Yeah, Jill, I'd put that tea bag and it'd be two hours later. I'm like, 'Oh yeah, I got tea.' " Don't do that. The longer it steeps, the more concentrated the oxalate can be, as well.

If you want tea, do like our people across the ocean, put a little milk in it. People in England will like to have a little milk in their tea. That's good, too.

Or don't worry about it at all. Have a true cup or two a day, don't steep it all day long, and you'll be fine. Get your calcium every day.

My patients don't have a problem once they go from 10 cups to two. Okay? So, matcha, I'm not worried about it.

I'm not worried about the matcha. And even and let me tell you about this, even though you didn't ask. There was a study done, and you can go on my mentor site, Dr.

Fred Coe, C-O-E, and he's a doctor at University of Chicago, and he's like the granddaddy of kidney stone prevention and, again, like my mentor. And so, we have an article on his site, one that I did, and it's called "A Thirst for Variety."

So, if you Google "A Thirst for Variety" and "Jill," the University of Chicago website will pull up with a whole bunch of great studies. He's the scientist behind all the kidney stone stuff, so you can read all the kind of data you want. And that article will say studies have been done on things like coffee, tea, now don't fall out of your chair, soda,

Diet soda, juice, okay? And they have been shown that they decrease stone risk. What, you?

Have you been drinking before the show? Are you drunk? No, no, I'm not.

You have to be careful when you read studies, too. The study said it will decrease your stone risk, but only if you drink those things within moderation, meaning

If you drink a glass of juice, if you drink, you know, less than 8 oz for juice. I don't like juice, period, too much sugar, end of story, that's me. But if you have a cup of coffee or two, if you have a diet soda or two, we all know I'm not going to advocate having soda, one soda is your daily allotment of added sugar, I'm just saying what the study says, have a can of soda, do not, I'm not saying that, the study said.

Have all these things, why did it reduce stone risk?

Cuz there's just more fluids. That's all. It's when we drink lots of coffee, lots of these other things, that it could dehydrate us, the caffeine can dehydrate us, and, of course, when we drink too much sugar, junk, like soda and juices, it can raise our urine calcium and that can be a problem.

So, when we so A Thirst for Variety means you can have a lot of different fluids. Water is best,

And all the other ones have within moderation. It will decrease your stone risk simply because you're drinking more. Does that make sense, Jeff?

Oh yeah, absolutely! And you've mentioned in the past how some people will say like, "Oh, like this much beer helps me pass a stone," or helps me do this or that. But yeah, it's it's all the liquid is actual fluids themselves.

Yes, but wouldn't it be lovely if beer prevented disease or helped disease process? Well, we'd all be drunk, I guess. I would.

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. It almost feels like kombucha is Kombucha has that sort of that vibe going with it, because it is also fermented and it's a similar thing that can have some alcohol to it, but yeah, you wonder how beneficial maybe something like that actually is, and how much is hype.

Exactly. Exactly. I have to say, and I'll get hate, but we all know I don't care, cuz I'm old.

I don't care about that silly stuff. Most of it is hype, all that stuff. You know, there is there's there's great stuff on fermentation.

I mean, I believe in that, for sure, but, you know, do we notice these drinks are $27? I mean, come on, you know. I don't know, there's a lot of hype, too, with it.

You get a little piece of data that says something's good, then the next thing you know, there's kombucha,

Toilet paper, Saran Wrap, plastic utensils, and everyone's buying it. Look at gluten-free stuff! Most people don't have celiac, okay?

Yet, the whole world turned gluten-free because it then gets washed out in the community and people think it's just healthy. Meanwhile, if you turn it around, Buster Brown, and look at your gluten-free product, and everyone's like, "Ain't nobody talking about gluten." Well, I am, people! Turn it around, and you'll see in a lot of gluten-free products, there's a lot more sugar and salt in those products.

So, feel free, of course, to have them. They're not going to hurt you, unless you're adding a lot more sugar and salt to your diet and not realizing it. All right, I digress, as usual.

No, it's perfect. So, I think that's a great place to wrap. So, if you have a question for the next episode, the voicemail number is 773-789-8763.

And yeah, we'll feature your question. Promise I'm not going to take all the take all the moments to actually interact with Jill. But yeah, just reintroducing matcha recently, I was thinking and I do like it with a splash of coconut milk.

It's just nice over ice, you know? And

Oh, so good. Do you have the whoozey? Do you have the boop?

I don't have the fancy like whisk or anything. I just have a little like milk frother.

Well, I'm going to tell you to really get that matcha for all the matcha people right in the comments, are you using that little bamboo whisker thing? It makes the difference. At one point, I was getting a little bit too on my high horse, and I'm like, "Ooh, I'm going to go get me a I'm going to go to Amazon and get me a bamboo whisker." And I don't really know if it makes it better, but I felt better using it, I'll tell you that.

So, I think it's I think it really does make a difference and really mixes it a lot better. So, you might want to check that out if you're into it.

Yeah, it makes it Makes a ceremony of it. Yeah, I think we'll wrap right here. So, thanks again, everyone, for listening and we'll see you next time.