Is Cheese Good or Bad for Kidney Stones?

Is cheese good or bad 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 nice, salty, tasty cheese. What are we what are we looking at here?

Jeff, I'm so excited! So, you know, before we shoot these, Jeff's like, "What about this? Okay, let's go." But and so he said, "What about cheese?" And I'm like, "God, all these hundreds of videos and we've never just had a cheese one." And I got really giddy, and I'm like, "Gosh, Jill, you really need to get a life and get out more." I mean, it's just kind of It is, Jeff.

Don't feel Don't Don't minimize it. It's ridiculous that I'm excited to talk about cheese, but any chance we get to educate, it just makes me giddy. So, cheese!

Here's how one of my private patient calls go every day, not once in a while, every day. So, I'll say, "Listen, Doris, what about calcium? Are you getting enough calcium?" I'm looking at their urine collection.

I'm looking at stuff. I see, I see. And Doris is like, "Oh yeah, Jill, I eat lots of cheese, lots of cheese."

Folks, cheese is not the only thing that's going to give you calcium, but what's interesting to me is half of my patients, the first thing they'll say is, "I eat cheese," okay? And why do I think that's funny? Because what are you eating, 10 bricks of cheese a day?

I mean, you know, you're eating a little cheese, great. But that's there's not tons of calcium in cheese. You'd be needing to eat a brick.

So, let's break this down. First of all, you're eating cheese because it's high fat, high salt. Of course, it's delicious.

Who doesn't want to lick up some cheese? The salt in cheese is phenomenal, not in a good way. It's really high.

So, people will say, "Well, Jill, I've got to have my cheddar cheese on an omelet." So, that's okay. Cheddar cheese is one of the highest in sodium, okay? That's why it's so delicious.

Plus, it's orange, my favorite color. Who doesn't want to look at that cheese?

So, maybe you use cheese, and you put it on your omelet, and I'm not going to take away your cheddar cheese, but can we mix it up with a lower-sodium cheese? Let me explain. Swiss cheese is probably the least sexiest cheese out there, but that's because it's one of the lowest in sodium.

It is one of the lowest in sodium. So, a typical slice, pre-sliced piece of Swiss cheese, has about 180 mg of calcium and typically less than 70 mg of sodium. By golly, that's a beautiful combination, okay?

And you could say, "Yeah, but it's not good because it ain't salty, Jill." I know. I know. But, I promise you, once you work on your salt goals for the Kidney Stone Diet, you won't care as about salt as much.

I promise. Sugar you'll still want. It will still be delicious.

Salt, when you start lowering it, after a few weeks you'll be like, "Oh my God, that's so salty!" So, cheese can be used for some of your calcium, but not all of it because it's too salty.

So, maybe you do Swiss cheese, two pieces of that. You almost have 400 mg of sodium. Women and men need up to 1,000 mg of calcium a day.

Postmenopausal women up to 1,200. So, that's a nice chunk of your sodium, right? So, a couple pieces of Swiss cheese on a sandwich, wonderful.

But once you go into the a charcuterie board Is that how you say that, Jeff? Charcuterie?

Yeah, charcuterie.

Yeah, charcuterie. So, when you get one of those boards, I have a girlfriend that always is she always has her charcuterie board and it has all these cheeses and all these meats. And I'm like, "Oh, Madonna Mia!

Really, Anime? You're really going to put all these cheeses out there?" Cuz you want them. Fat and salt, delicious.

But so many of those things when you're at a party or, you know, appetizers, whatever, those cheeses are really salty: cheddar, gouda, brie, all of them.

So, we and for those of you on a weight loss journey, so high in calories. And nobody's just having The portion for cheese is supposed to be like a die, like a pair of dice, but one. Nobody's doing that, come on!

Nobody's getting a little boo kitty like this and going, "Oh, that's all I can eat, I'm full." When you have cheese, you want some cheese, man! So, I get excited about it cuz cheese is so good, but it's not great for us, okay? So, I want you to look for lower-sodium cheeses: Swiss; havarti can be a lower-sodium cheese; Trader Joe's, if you have one by you, they have a gruyere and Swiss mix that it's already shredded.

I'll use that one if I have some eggs. So, I want you to Again, turn it around, Buster Brown, and start looking at your nutrition labels. You may say, "I don't care what that fuzzy-headed lady says.

I'm having some cheddar cheese." That's fine! Portion not perfection. Work it into your diet.

Work it into your sodium budget. At Kidney Stone Diet, we're not I think our biggest goal here is to bring joy back, bring food back to you, widen the scope of the food that you're eating because many of you are depriving yourself too much.

So, pay attention when I say, I'm not saying that you can't have cheese. I'm saying notice how much sodium is in it. Don't use it all for your calcium bank, okay?

Cuz it's just so high in sodium. And, again, for kidney stone formers, up to 60% of you will have this one urine abnormality, which you will find out by doing a 24-hour urine collection, and that is high urine calcium. So, when we eat too much sodium, it makes us pull out calcium.

So, let me just say it real fast. It's boring. It's science, folks, but when you're eating, and I'm going to Jill it up so it's nice and easy, but if you're eating too much sodium, your kidney kidneys are filtering your blood.

God bless them. Every single day, they're working so hard to filter your blood because that blood is going back to your body, and it's going to feed your whole body, and it needs to be clean. So, your kidneys are going to work really hard and filter it.

They're going to want to take out some of that excess sodium, and when the kidneys do that, calcium follows the sodium.

And that calcium and the sodium are going into the urine. And for a lot of you who are not peeing a lot, that calcium is sitting in there. And those little crystals are looking for other crystals like oxalate and phosphate.

So, when you eat too much sodium, you're going to have a little bit more calcium in your urine than you should. And, by the way, that calcium that was taken from your blood, sorry, does not get sent to your bones, so it's really important why so many kidney stone formers also have bone disease, osteoporosis.

So, pay attention to sodium. Cheese is delicious. Cottage cheese, my goodness!

Everybody's making high-protein meals, including myself, with cottage cheese. But look at the sodium: 300, 400 mg in a 1/2 a cup of cottage cheese. Find the lower-sodium ones.

I use Breakstone. They have a lower-sodium chee cottage cheese, but not all stores carry it, so do your best. Cottage cheese, don't be eating it as much as y'all are, okay, because it's very high in sodium.

So, portion not perfection. Pay attention to it. Cheese, enjoy it.

Do not use it as your main calcium source. Always notice the sodium in each slice or each portion you're eating. If there are certain cheeses you love, please keep enjoying them.

Sunday breakfast without cheddar on your omelet maybe too much for you to handle, so lower the portion. It's not a free food, cheddar cheese, and maybe you want to mix it with a lower-sodium cheese like Swiss or the other cheeses I talked about in this video.

So, again, I we're not here to take away all your favorite foods. We're just telling you pay attention to exactly how much sodium is in some of your favorite products. Lower the portion you're having.

And now you understand why we're talking about sodium. For high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and kidney stone prevention, it's important. Kidneystonediet.com for more information on it, Jeff.

Yeah, absolutely, and that's where you can work directly with Jill to prevent future stones, and, ideally, call the last one your last kidney stone. But, I think with that, we'll wrap, and we'll see you next week.

Everybody, have a beautiful week. Thanks for being here with us. Bye!