In this episode, Jill addresses the first kidney stone myth, which is the belief that drinking milk should be stopped to prevent calcium oxalate stones. Jill explains that not getting enough calcium can actually increase the risk of kidney stones and bone loss. She emphasizes the need for a balanced intake of calcium and provides insights into the role of calcium in preventing kidney stones.
Takeaways
- Effective partnerships require mutual respect, admiration, and the ability to recognize and utilize each person’s strengths.
- Drinking milk is not a cause of calcium stones; in fact, not getting enough calcium can increase the risk of kidney stones and bone loss.
- Calcium plays a crucial role in preventing kidney stones by binding with oxalate in the intestines and kidneys, preventing stone formation.
- Interpretation and advocacy are essential in medical appointments to ensure proper understanding and effective communication with healthcare providers.
Jeff Sarris
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.
Jill Harris
And I’m Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse. And I was just looking at Jeff and I’m just loving him extra. I am, I’m just loving you extra. I’m so grateful for you in my life. You know, yeah, I really am. You know, Jeff does so many important things behind the scenes, things that he doesn’t even tell me because he knows my eyes will glaze over. But I mean, without Jeff, there’s no meal plan.
The website doesn’t work without Jeff. I mean, he does all the nitty gritty stuff behind the scenes. Without Jeff, there’s no YouTube channel because I’m not, he’s producing all this. He’s doing all the things. So I just show up and get questions. And then Dave, who’s the third person in this, in our partnership, I mean, he makes everything beautiful. He, the website is all the infographics we share, all the meal plan pictures. I take the pictures, but he makes beautiful info stuff from them. So, I mean, it’s just a beautiful threesome. And it’s just, you know, sometimes in life you meet people and you join together for a very specific cause and everybody has their own thing. And it just works and everybody respects each other and admires each other, leaves each other alone, and only speaks to each other when they really need to.
You know what I mean? It’s not like we’re meeting every day. We just are so good at the things that we do, each of us, that it’s just amazing. You know, isn’t it? It’s just so, it’s not effortless, because we are all really working hard. I don’t want to make it seem like that, but us working together is really effortless. And that is so rare in life, isn’t it?
Jeff Sarris
Yeah. And it’s so important because like, I have conversations like this a lot. Like, how do you find a partner? How do you partner with people? And I think the big thing is not having ego and being able to understand this is what I’m good at. This is what you’re good at. This is what he’s good at. And like, we’re not stepping on each other’s toes. We’re not trying to get credit for anything that makes no sense. Just, it has nothing to do with ego. It’s just about creating the best thing we can create together. And when you find that it’s really rare, but when you find that it’s amazing. And I think that’s what we have here.
Jill Harris
It is amazing because we all have stress in our lives doing all the work that we do. And the fact that you’re working with partners that there is no, there is only gratitude, admiration, adoration and complete love. I mean, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s like, it’s just amazing. So when the music went on and I looked up and I saw you, I’m like, God, I just love him so much. And I’m just so grateful.
That’s how I feel. I’m so grateful for Dave and I always tell him that too. But you know, we’re just, we’re just lucky. I just feel very blessed, you know? Without sounding like a picture, like a Rachel Dunn picture in Marshall’s blessed. I mean, I just do though. I mean, that’s how I feel. I just feel over the top filled with gratitude because it’s a beautiful partnership that we have. It really is.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, the feelings are mutual too. And if you only listen, head over to YouTube, you get to see Jill’s smiling face, especially at the beginning of this episode. This is a huge smile. Just, I don’t know, it just warms your heart seeing you. Yeah. So this week we were going to dive into some kidney stone myths. There’s a whole laundry list of myths that you have that you face consistently. So we’re going to start, start with some today.
Kidney Stone Myth: Stop Drinking Milk
Jill Harris
Okay, there’s no particular order. They’re just common things that I’m asked all the time. I wrote them down. I got lots of them. I wrote them down. And so we made, this will just be a series because there’s just so many. So let’s start with if your doctor says, or if you assume you should stop drinking milk, if you drink milk. I don’t drink milk Jill, whatever. Let’s just say no calcium.
You were told you make a calcium, just a calcium stone. Lots of doctors just say you make calcium stones, stop drinking milk or don’t use calcium. That’s a myth. That’s a big myth. As a matter of fact, if you don’t get enough calcium, you will increase your kidney stone risk. If you do not get enough calcium, you will increase your kidney stone risk. Also, my main goal is for you to lower your kidney stone risk. But I’m also looking at you as a whole human being and Jeff knows exactly what I’m going to say. You also have a what Jeff? Yes, and you need to feed it. So we’re all getting to the age where we may be having some bone loss. And so not getting enough calcium can definitely increase your risk for bone loss as well. Osteopenia, osteoporosis. So it is a myth that you will lower your stone risk by lowering calcium. That is not true. You are more at risk if you don’t get calcium. So here’s what happens.
Calcium and Kidney Stone Risk
Oxalate cannot leave your body unless it has calcium to join with in the intestines.
Once they join together in the intestines, the excess oxalate will leave through the stool. So it cannot get reabsorbed, oxalate, back into your bloodstream and accumulate.
Calcium and oxalate also join in your kidney. That’s why you don’t want to let that absorption You want to get rid of that extra oxalate and so you don’t want those two things to join in the kidney because that’s where they form kidney stones So it’s confusing there’s videos in this chat on this channel that explains that but What I want you to know is Men and women need up to not over
a thousand milligrams of calcium a day. Never more than 500 milligrams at a time. Because we don’t absorb calcium that great.
Women who no longer get their period need up to 1200 milligrams of calcium a day. This will help minimize bone loss, it will help lower oxalate in your body, and it will lower your stone risk. Some of you, when I look at your urine, not some of you, many of you, when I look at your urine collections, you have high urine calcium. And you will say to me, Jill, I don’t drink any milk I don’t even know where calcium is. Why is my urine calcium so high? Calcium is much more of a kidney stone risk than oxalate. I’m gonna tell you right now folks, once you get rid of spin engine almonds, calcium is the main issue why people get kidney stones. And the kidney stone diet goals are all there to lower urine calcium. The annoying lower your sodium to 1500 milligrams a day.
lower your added sugar to 25 grams of added sugar a day for women and 38 grams for added sugar for men and eat normal amounts of meat protein for your size. Those goals are there to lower urine calcium because too much of those things, salt, sugar and meat protein, which includes fish, anything that swims, fish or runs, that’s meat.
So you want to eat normal amounts for your body. When we overeat those things, calcium is leached out of our bone, increasing our risk for osteopenia, which is the beginning of bone disease, and osteoporosis, full -blown bone disease. But also, it will increase your kidney stone risk. Because now you have all this excess calcium in your urine, you’re eating a ton of spinach and almonds, you don’t know nothing about nothing yet.
And those that excess of calcium and oxalate or also phosphorus, all this other stuff that can be excess in your urine, calcium can also, combined with phosphate, make calcium phosphate stones. So the calcium is the issue for many kidney stone formers, not just oxalate. Get away, spinach and almonds. You don’t have an oxalate problem anymore. But calcium, you still may. And this is precisely why you need a 24 -hour urine collection. You would never know you have hypercalceria, which is too much calcium in the urine, unless you did a 24 -hour urine collection. And you won’t know anything about calcium. No one will talk to you about it. No doctor’s ever like, you’re getting enough calcium? Not until you have kidney stones or bone disease. That’s when we’re talked to about calcium. So that’s usually around 50 to 60. Meanwhile, you have never, since you were five, had any calcium. Now.
I just want to, because we all know I go off on tangents, but I want to explain calcium for you guys. It is a myth to not get any calcium.
You need calcium to lower your oxalate, thereby decreasing your kidney stone risk. You also need calcium for your bones. And you need to follow the kidney stone diet to lower calcium leaching from your bones and being thrown into the urine. Okay? So it is a myth. You all need calcium. There’s plenty of articles on my blog to get it.
as if you’re a vegan or vegetarian, non -dairy ways to get your calcium, and regular ways, like, you know, well, not regular, you know, other ways, like dairy, okay, lactose -free milk, milk, whatever. So go to the blog at kidneystonediet .com. Also, this channel has plenty of stuff on non -dairy milks, calcium in general. So, myth number one. Doesn’t mean it’s the most popular myth, but it’s a big one. Please get enough calcium.
and that will lower your kidney stone risk. The opposite will increase your kidney stone risk. Ta -da!
Jeff Sarris
Yeah. But that is what’s so, um, I don’t want to say misleading, but it’s hard to grasp that. Yeah. Our urine calcium is too high. So like in our mind, it’s like, I’m consuming too much calcium. It’s like, it’s this weird, uh, yeah, that’s the word.
Jill Harris
Absolutely, it’s counterintuitive, right? So people are like, I don’t even have calcium, why is my calcium so high? Well, you’re eating 6 ,000 milligrams of sodium, and the sodium is pushing this extra calcium from your bone. And also, by the way, you better go get your bones checked too, because you could have osteoporosis, because this isn’t just a one -off, this has been going on, right? The other thing with calcium is sometimes our vitamin D is way too high, sometimes our vitamin D is way too low.
And so that’s another thing why people have screwed up calcium levels. The other thing is people have parathyroid issues. Maybe they have a tumor on their parathyroid. If you’re listening on Spotify, Audible, or Apple, you can’t see me, but the glands around your thyroid, there’s four glands around your thyroid, and it looks like a little butterfly, and the thyroid’s the body of the butterfly. And sometimes those parathyroid glands can have tumors.
and they can secrete too much calcium because the parathyroid controls calcium. Sometimes it doesn’t work so well or it’s overreacting and spilling too much calcium. So if you do have high urine calcium, you need to get that, so you do a urine collection, that’s how you’re going to know if you have it. And then there’s, when I talk to patients, I’m like talk to your doctor about getting this test, this test, this test to rule out reasons why you may have high urine calcium.
And also make sure you’re doing the Kidney Stone Diet or fill those goals and if all that stuff is cool you will then be told that you have idiopathic hypercalceria which is a big fancy name that simply means idiopathic we’ve ruled everything else out medically and diet wise hyper too much cal calcium urea and the urine so idiopathic means there’s no reason why this patient has this high urine calcium.
It’s idiopathic, could be genetics. And sometimes, well, up to 50 % of people who have, if you have high urine calcium just because everything else is cool and you just have it, up to 50 % of your blood relatives will also have it too and that’s the reason why this can run in families. So this calcium part is so important and the biggest reason I complain about people not getting urine collections ordered. If your doctor said you don’t need a urine collection,
You better push back. And if he says it again, because I had a patient, you know, the other day that said, well, he said no, I just, he said no, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m going to get another doctor, I guess. Yeah, you should. Or any doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician’s assistant can order these. Anybody can. They probably don’t have to interpret them. But then you got me for that. And then I can tell you how to talk to the doctor so you can get on the right treatment plan and the right tests done. So I don’t diagnose anybody, but I teach them in those urine analysis calls, here’s what everything means, here’s what to talk to your doctor about, right? That’s how that goes. So the calcium thing’s a big deal, yes.
Jeff Sarris
That’s what’s so important. To have someone who can help interpret it in a way where you can have a better doctor visit, that is huge.
Jill Harris
Yes, a whole point of that. Yes, that’s all. Listen, when I was going through all my chemo and stuff, I was like, man, that’s why these calls came about. I’m like, damn, if I had some kind of, you know, if I had somebody advocating for me or just put little words in my ear so I knew what to ask, and I was flying to New York every month, so I was very expensive at a stay overnight. I’m like, oh my God, I just had this 10 minute visit about my cancer.
I didn’t have the right questions. I didn’t, you know, so, you know, people are like, well, you’re a nurse. You should have known. I don’t know shit about cancer. I know about kidney stones. We all specialize in what we specialize in. And plus, when you’re a patient, you’re scared. I’m scared. I was scared. It was very scary. I thought I was dying for Pete’s sake. It was stage four cancer. So, you know, it was very hard. And a lot of times I was in those offices by myself. And so, uh…
That’s how those 24 hour urine collection calls came about. I’m like, I’m never going to let a kidney stone former feel this way. And I’m going to make sure that they know how to utilize that doctor’s appointment so they can be really productive. And when they leave it, they didn’t feel like I did when I left those doctor’s offices. I felt like, I don’t know, it was awful. It was not good. And I don’t want people to have to ever deal with that. So that’s why that call was made. Yeah.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you can find that and absolutely everything at kidneystonediet.com, including some free resources about having better doctor visits and things that can help you absolutely free, no cost whatsoever. There’s so many resources on the site, including the free weekly email where Jill like checks in an inbox every week and keeps you on track. It’s just…
Jill Harris
Yes.
Yeah, this week I’m giving a free recipe out for Valentine’s Day, so you’re missing it if you’re not joined on that newsletter, kidneystonediet.com start page. Go sign up for it. Absolutely get a lot of free little discounts and deals when you are.
Jeff Sarris
Perfect.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think with that, we will wrap this is a kidney stone myth number one, and we’ll be doing a whole series of these. But if you have any specific questions, the number to call is 773 -789 -8763. And we’d love to feature you on a future episode. But I think with that we’ll wrap. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe, give it a like. It means a lot, helps a lot with.
the algorithms and reaching as many people as we can, but we appreciate each and every one of you for tuning in. So with that, I think we’ll wrap. Yep. Oh, love you too. Well, with that we’ll wrap and we’ll see you next week.
Jill Harris
Thank you. Yes, I love you, Jeff.
Bye.
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