Aw. For the people that have been around for a while, they're going to be like, "Oh, I know what she's going to say." But for anyone new watching this video, my goodness, please take this very, very important advice. Please take this from me and get this done and save yourself so much money, anguish, pain, anxiety, when is that next stone going to hit, helplessness, hopelessness, oh, dramatic!
It's not. It's not dramatic from somebody who's been very sick in her life. You know, being sick is like one of the worst things ever.
I really relate to all of you who watch me. And, the why I get I just get so upset about this because the 24-hour urine collection is just, most of the time, not ordered for kidney stone formers. Here's common scenarios what I have heard over the years.
"Jill, my doctor told me wait for the second stone before I get the 24-hour urine collection." "Jill, my doctor told me it doesn't make a difference." "Jill, my doctor told me it's a waste of time." "Jill, my doctor told me there's nothing on that test that he needs to know, or she needs to know." So, here's what I'm going to tell you.
As a patient myself, not with kidney stones, but with other things, cancer, in remission. I never want to scare anybody, it's not back, it's in remission. But I want to be able to do anything I can do not to get sick again.
And 24-hour urine collections, they're a pain in the butt. I mean, you're sitting home, you're having to collect your urine for 24 hours, but you can prevent kidney stones based upon those results and never make another stone again. We can get up to 80% reduction rate in new kidney stone formation.
The patients that work with me, go on my Facebook page, it's a private Facebook page. There's thousands and thousands of people on there and they will tell you. I'll always say, once in a while I'll say, "Who hasn't had a Who hasn't had a stone and for how long, since you started the Kidney Stone Diet?" Tons of posts on there: five years, seven years, two years, one year, just started, just had my ultrasound, no new stones.
I mean, I couldn't be here for all these years if this didn't work, all these things I tell you. But also, you've got to do the work and the work begins with telling your doctor, "Doctor, I understand that you're saying wait for the second stone, but I don't want to do that. I want to get on prevention now.
I want to see why I'm making kidney stones and I know that 24-hour urine collection will tell us why I am." Folks, there's things on that urine collection you will never know is going on with you, like high urine calcium, which will not only lead to more kidney stones, but it can and, most likely, will lead to osteoporosis.
I can't tell you how many 40-year-olds come to me and they already have osteopenia, which is the precursor before osteoporosis because they're losing urine calcium They're losing calcium from their bone. Why is that happening? There could be several reasons and these are most of the goals of the Kidney Stone Diet and this is why they're on there.
If you're eating too much salt, you may spill out too much calcium. Spilling out calcium means it's coming from your bone and it's being dumped into your urine. Eating too much added sugar, you can lose calcium from your bone and, again, it's going into your urine.
Eating paleo, carnivore, too much meat—you can have meat, not too much meat—that also could pull calcium out of your bone, dump it into the urine. Then you have patients that don't pee a lot. So, now you have all this excess u- urine calcium and those that those calcium crystals are looking for oxalate crystals, phosphate crystals, and these crystals in your kidney, in the urine in your kidney, they really want to join each other.
They're like little magnets, wanting to find each other. So, we want to lower urine calcium and we want to follow that, and you can only do that by 24-hour urine collections. There's also other reasons you have high urine calcium.
Your parathyroid is not working well or overworked. That's a big reason. You would never know you had it unless you did a urine collection.
Your vitamin D is too high or too low. It's causing high urine calcium. So, there's many different reasons.
And when you do a urine consult with me, 'cause I really am an expert in reading those urine collection results, and then I will help you better facilitate your doctor office visits, 'cause a lot of them will say everything looks good. No, it doesn't. I've never seen a urine collection People will say, "Well, my doctor said it looks good." Well, why are you still making stones?
It's not everything looks good. Sometimes laboratory reference ranges are much too generous, perhaps the doctor doesn't know where the research says this should be for a kidney stone former. I mean, there's a million different reasons why, but if you don't get that ordered, you will most likely make more kidney stones.
Just drinking water, in many of your cases, is not the reason. So, you've got to get the urine collection to rule out all the reasons why you're forming kidney stones. It's so important.
You cannot bypass that. Here's another thing: patients will say, "Well, I did the first urine collection, Jill." Then three years later they call me, "I got a new kidney stone, Jill." "Well, where's your follow-up?" "Well, I never did the follow-up urine collection." And I'm like, "Bobby, I told you to make sure you get that done." So, the common scenario goes like this: a patient has a kidney stone, the patient heard me yapping on YouTube or on my Facebook page or family on Google, and said, "Oh, that old lady says to do a urine collection.
Let me get one done." Bobby gets one done, the doctor goes o- Bobby went over the urine collection with me, I said talk to your doctor about these things, and then the Bobby goes to the doctor's office. The doctor changes some things, maybe even puts Bobby on a prescription. Bobby never gets the follow-up ordered and the doctor didn't order it for him, so Bobby doesn't know the follow-up is another urine collection to see if the changes Bobby is doing is having the desired effect of preventing new stones.
If you don't do that, you don't know where you are. So, are you doing enough changes? People say to me all the time, "Jill, I lowered my salt." Well, you lowered it from 10,000, now it's 8,000 mg a day.
That, yes, you did lower. That's a fact, but it's not where we want it to be. So, the urine collection is all the pieces that we want to see in order to prevent kidney stones.
So, you tell your doctor, when the doctor says it's not needed, but it is, it is needed. I know I want to see why I'm forming stones because, this is what you tell them, "I will do everything in my power to stick to diets, lifestyle changes so I don't make new stones." Okay? It's so very important.
Please don't bypass this step and I am going to get all dramatic on you because you will keep making stones if you don't know. That would be like me having a medical condition and there's a treatment for it, but I'm not going to find out what treatment is best going to work for me because I haven't done the testing to find that out.
That's just silly, right? So, you want to get that done. That's where all your information and your treatment plan will be based upon those results.
Super important. And if you don't You don't have to You could You could A lot of doctors will say, "Well, " Now, most of my a lot of my business comes from doctor referrals, so I'm very well respected in the urology community, believe me. Top docs send their patients to me for dietary changes.
But there will always be some doc that they don't know me, so I always say go to University of Chicago website, kidneystonediet.uchicago.edu, that's Dr. Fred Coe. He's prolific in this area, he's been doing it for 50, 60 years, and he's my mentor.
So, use his website when you go into the doctor's office. I'm on that website explaining the importance of 24-hour urine collections. So, please heed my warning.
If you're new and you've never heard me talk about this before, please ask your doctor to do a 24-hour urine collection. That means they will order it, you will do this collection at home, and then you'll get the results. And then, hopefully, too, you'll schedule a consult with me 'cause I'm really good at helping people understand them so they can have a better doctor office visit, okay?
And also teach you what really is a low-salt diet and how do you do that and low sugar and all the things. So, it's it's well worth the money for that consult, for sure.
