In this episode, Jill discusses the role of lemon juice in passing kidney stones. She addresses common misconceptions about lemon juice and its effectiveness in kidney stone prevention. Jill emphasizes the importance of understanding individual citrate levels and the need for a 24-hour urine collection. She also highlights the significance of advocating for oneself and taking action to prevent kidney stones.
Takeaways
- Lemon juice alone will not help pass kidney stones; it is the excess fluids, particularly water, that aid in the passage of stones.
- Lemons can be useful in kidney stone prevention if citrate levels are low, as citrate acts as a natural stone inhibitor.
- It is essential to have a 24-hour urine collection to determine if lemons or other interventions are necessary for kidney stone prevention.
- Taking action and making lifestyle changes are crucial for preventing kidney stones, and having a supportive community can make a significant difference.
Jeff Sarris
This week on the podcast is another fact or fiction. Is it fact or fiction that lemon juice will help me pass my kidney stone?
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. Happy to be here.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, definitely. And yeah, lemons, lemon juice, citric acid, all of the things that sort of tie into that. Definitely another one of those just common conceptions. And I didn’t conception, that’s not the right word, but common sort of views. Assumption, there you go.
Jill Harris
assumptions, notions, treatments, all of the things. Yes.
Jeff Sarris
Mm -hmm. Yeah, so I think this is a good one to go especially paired with the cranberry juice from last week. I think this is a Just sort of that next logical step. Like is it true that lemon juice can help pass?
Misconceptions about lemon juice and kidney stones
Jill Harris
This, the lemon, the whole lemon thing, and people who have been around the block with me for a while, they’re gonna be like, oh shit, here she goes, buy the lemon.
Jeff Sarris
Ha ha ha.
Jill Harris
You guys have got to realize that I come at this as somebody who has stage four cancer and a patient, me, who wants real information, not cock -a -bull -doo, okay? I want real information. I want to know that things are going to help what I got. I don’t want misinformation. I do not want that.
So meaning I get a little mama bear protective about this for kidney stone formers. There’s all these generic orders for patients to suck on lemons. If you see anything on the internet, it will generically tell you about kidney stones. It will say, you better suck on a lemon. You better. If you want to prevent kidney stones, drink lemon juice. Doctors will generically, I love all the doctors.
but they will generically, without doing a 24 hour urine collection, tell patients to suck on a lemon. The reason I’m annoyed by this is because a couple different things. Patients will think that if they suck on a lemon, that is all they need to do, because that’s all they’ve been told. And I know this because of working with patients for 25 years, and they have said, I thought I was doing everything.
They told me to suck on a lemon and that would be it to prevent kidney stones. So the patient didn’t do any part of the diet, the kidney stone diet. They didn’t lower their sodium, they didn’t lower their sugar, they didn’t lower their oxalate, they didn’t, and of course they’re still making stones. You must do a 24 hour urine collection to see if lemons would be helpful to you. Lemons can provide you with more citrate.
Citrate is a natural stone inhibitor, meaning it will help, it will create an environment in your urine that will lessen your stone risk, but only if you need it. Some of you are walking around with a really high urine pH, and your citrate, by the way, is absolutely fine. Lemons are not going to do a thing for you.
Jill Harris
The question was, before I go off my crazy path, the question was specifically, because we have a whoosie on will lemons dissolve kidney stones. This is specifically, will lemons help pass my kidney stones? No. No. Lemons are not going to help you pass kidney stones. Water.
will help you pass kidney stones drinking copious amount of water while water while you’re so say stones on the move you definitely do want to drink some water to help flush that out to help it along you putting lemon in there ain’t making it go any faster so that’s what I want to be very clear about.
Lemons and Passing Kidney Stones
We’re not talking about dissolving kidney stones here the question is will lemons help pass a kidney stone. People will say, “Yes, it did Jill. I was drinking lemon water all day long and that lemon helped pass my stone.” No, it didn’t. The water helped pass your stone. Just so happened that lemon was in it. Could have been bourbon in that. Could have been a tangerine in that. Doesn’t matter. It was the water. It was the excess fluids that helped pass your kidney stone. That is the thing there. So, but lemons can.
be useful in kidney stone prevention if your citrate is just a little low. If it’s really low, a lemon ain’t gonna hit you. You need a potassium citrate pill, a sodium bicarb, you need other ways to get it up there. Also, just drinking lemon juice as a prevention measure. Many of you are walking around with a high urine pH.
This can increase your risk for calcium phosphate stones, especially if you also have high urine calcium. Two things you’d never know you had unless you did a 24 -hour urine collection, and this is why you need to get them. So don’t generically take lemons as a prevention unless you know you need them. Lemon juice is not helping you pass kidney stones. The fluids in general are, and you know, if you’re drinking a lot of water that day and adding a little lemon juice in there because you’re sick of drinking water and you want to taste something else, fine, okay? But it’s not helping you pass the kidney stone. Does that make sense, Jeff?
Citrate and Specific Types of Stones
Jeff Sarris (06:26.343)
Yeah, it absolutely does. And you mentioned citrate. Does that obviously need to get your tests to know sort of what your levels are? Does that apply more to specific types of stones or is it across the board?
Jill Harris
Any kidney stone form, citrate is a molecule in the body and in kidney stone disease what it does is it protects calcium in your urine. It’s like a little shield protecting calcium. And so when your calcium is covered with this citrate shield then other crystals cannot connect to her like oxalate, phosphate, all the other things that are making up these calcium containing stones. Because people say I make calcium stones. It’s bound with something else.
It’s just not a calcium stone. It’s calcium phosphate or calcium oxalate. And up to 80 % of stones are calcium oxalate in nature. And so some people are making kidney stones because they have too much calcium in their urine. That’s very common. That’s why kidney stone patients also can have osteopenia or osteoporosis because they’re losing calcium and this excess calcium is in their urine. If you don’t have enough citrate, you have
this unprotected calcium and the oxalate crystals and phosphate crystals are looking to connect to her. So the doctor will then say drink some crystal light, add some lemon to your water, if it’s just the citrate is just a little low. Those two things will just bring it up so much. And then potassium citrate is used, it’s a big pill, and it’s used to increase people’s citrate that is very low.
Jeff Sarris
you
Jill Harris
So that will bring it up and then the calcium is protected by the shield so these crystals cannot connect to her. Okay, so they can’t form a stone. The other reason some of these things are included is if you make uric acid stones, lemon can help dissolve those type of stones. Lemon can also increase your pH if it’s low. Diabetics, people who have malabsorption issues, they can benefit from that.
but you have to have a urine collection to see if these things are a problem for you. Because if not, you could be adding more problems for yourself, but you wouldn’t know that because you haven’t done a urine collection. And I know people must get sick of me, but if I had somebody telling me what test is vital for you to do, I would be like, okay, I’m doing that.
Please get your doctor to order that for you. Many doctors will say, oh, let’s wait for the second stone to do a urine test. Why would we ever, ever put a patient through another stone episode before we started preventative measures? Why would we do that? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. I think, you know, I’ve had doctors tell me, look, Jill, I do urine collections, but nobody wants to change their lifestyle.
And so there’s no point in putting the patient through that. The doctor is not wrong. Many of you may just watch these shows but never do anything about it. And it is a problem in our society, especially since we have so much on the internet. Collecting content, reading, you know, we join things, we get a book, we look at YouTube, but we actually, consuming content does nothing for us unless we take action, you can’t consume content and think you’re going to help yourself in any kind of way.
Taking Action for Kidney Stone Prevention
That’s the beginning to get the information needed to create the action plan. So I’m begging you as a patient myself with my own illness, when I read something, something that could be beneficial for me, I put that plan into action.
Jill Harris
not right away because maybe I’m not willing to do it. What am I, a superstar? No, I mean I’m human. It takes me. But if I find something with good literature behind it and success rates from other people and science and all the things, and here’s, because I get a lot of naysayers with this. Well, Jill, I drank this and it helped me. There ain’t no science. It’s not always about science. These doctors just want to make money. No, they don’t.
These guys are surgeons. There’s always going to be millions of kidney stone patients. They don’t need your money, okay? I promise you, doctors are not in the business to keep you sick. And I know people think that and patients say that, but really it makes me mad. We medical people are not in the business to keep you sick. We’re not. So lay off that kind of thinking. Please feel free to write negative comments. I will, you know, I just, I have no tolerance for that. It’s not.
It’s not good thinking. Doctors don’t want to keep you sick. They don’t have the knowledge, perhaps, about diet stuff. Okay? But what I’m giving you is the knowledge to, with the things they may not know because they’re surgeons, I’m giving you that knowledge so you can go back to your doctor’s appointment and say, I want a 24 -hour year. Ah, you don’t need that. I want it and here’s what you say. I’d like it, dear doctor.
because I never want to make the kidney stone again and I will do everything you tell me to do based upon those results. So when the doctor has an eager patient, that doctor will write that script for the test. I rarely had doctors say no once the patient advocated for themselves. And if you advocate for yourself and the doctor still says no, time for second opinion. Time for second opinion. Because kidney stones can be prevented in most cases.
I’ve been doing this 25 years. I see what my patients have done. They’ve transformed their whole lives. Lower their A1C, get off their blood pressure medications, feel so much better, migraines just because they’re eating better. All kinds of things. No longer obese. Is it a miracle the kidney stone diet goes? No. The kidney stone was the worst thing they’ve ever experienced despite…
Jill Harris
all the other medical conditions they have and they never want to go through that pain again. They work their butt off, they lower their weight, they lower their kidney stone risk because they have an important reason why now. It’s not just looking cute in their shorts for summer. It’s March. People are writing me, Jill, what can I do? I got my daughter’s wedding. I got this. That’s not long -term weight loss. You have to be scared. In most cases,
In most cases, we human beings have to be hit up over our head to make a change. And when we’re scared enough, we just start listening. We start advocating. We start saying, never again. I’m done. It ain’t about looking cute. It’s about your health. It’s not about… You lose weight, people, to gain health. That’s why you lose weight. To gain health. Okay? Not to look cute.
It’s going to be a second, it’s going to be, it’s a nice little side effect. But you have to have an important reason why, and my patients are successful because they never want to go through that pain again. They never want to have a stent. They never want to have another ureteroscopy. They never want to have sepsis. They never want to be in the ICU. So they make a change. It’s like, you know, the smoker has lung cancer. Oh shit, let me put that out. Yeah.
We human beings, change is hard, folks. So, lots of times it takes, you know, it takes a lot to want to make a change. I learned a lot in my life after cancer. I wasn’t a nun, you know. I made a lot of changes. Emotional changes. All kinds of changes. Because I got so scared. It’s like one of those moments, it’s like, oh dear lord, or whoever you believe in, give me one more chance to make some shit right. And for some reason, I got that chance.
and I’m making shit right now in my life. But it took me thinking I was dying. So I don’t want anybody here, too, by the way, to think, oh, look at her, on her high horse. I say that, my mom used to always say those things. So it’s stuck in my brain. I’m still working on my emotional things. I don’t want anyone to think that I got it all down. I put work into what I do every single day to be a better human being because I don’t want to get sick like that again. And when you have stage four cancer,
Jill Harris
it comes back. It’s already come back once. You know, I’ve had cancer a couple times, different cancers. So, three different cancers. So, you have to be scared sometimes to make real changes. I’ve always been a pretty healthy eater. I’ve always cared about exercise, but you know, other things in my life I had to make some changes to. And I have, but it took me a lot. And don’t be like me. Don’t, don’t…
Don’t wait for three, four, seven stones. A lot of you guys do. Please don’t. Do something now so you never have to go through all the hell that I just listed that many patients do. Ask for a urine collection. Pay attention to the goals of the diet. It will help any other medical issue you have, pretty much. And treat your body as a machine. Be grateful for it. What it does for you every single day. And feed your mind.
with things that are going to make you motivated to take care of your body. If you’re hanging around somebody that’s caustic to you, get rid of them. Sometimes it’s hard, could be a family member. Do your best to surround yourself with good loving people that value you, care about you, know that you’re worth something, all those things. And I know I’m getting off, we’re talking about lemon juice, but all of this plays into lifestyle. So advocate for yourself, folks. If no one’s…
offering you preventative plans for kidney stone. Listen to what we’re asking you to do, go get it done. Don’t just listen and go back to your life. Action is what you need to make change. All right, Jeff, I’m done.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, yeah, and that’s the thing is finding the people to support you to uplift you, which that’s why the kidney stone prevention group exists on Facebook. That’s why the group coaching calls with Jill exist. You can surround yourself either free or premium, but you can surround yourself with people who experienced similar things to you. Maybe not exactly the same, but they’re also there to let you know that there’s a bright side. There is.
Jill Harris
Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. You know, we have the kidney stone, uh,
Jeff Sarris
the destination is brighter than maybe where you are right this moment, but it’s so important to understand that and also have the support to stick to habit change, because like you said, habit change is so difficult. So to have someone or many someones in your corner can make all the difference.
Jill Harris
Group calls and that’s where you know there’s a lot of people people get together and we’re talking about health we’re talking about lifestyle we’re talking about recipes we’re talking about anything you want to talk about kidneys don’t stop of course but there’s a lot of people in there who want to continue to weight lose weight and it’s a supportive group you know there’s a lot of people that don’t have support at home so you’re in a community I and Jeff too we love fostering community that’s what we love and so in those group calls I have three of them a week.
And we’re talking about, look, it’s not just about not eating a cookie. It’s about what’s causing you stress in your life. And then that stress is causing you to binge eat or whatever. It’s about let’s deal with the emotional aspect of what’s going on and what can we do instead of using food as a coping skill. So it’s a very loving, supportive group. It’s the highlight of my week, those calls and everybody that’s in it. We’ve been in them for a long time, so we know each other. We love having new people though because…
You know, it’s just whatever we’re going through in life, and especially illness, it’s so important not to feel alone. It can be so isolating and so depressing and it’s just scary if you’ve been sick. It’s really an anxiety producing. So it’s just a place where people can go for, what is it Jeff, we charge $24 a week? A month? It’s $6 a week, whatever it is, it’s like there’s six hours worth of calls in there.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah,
Jill Harris
I literally give those away. So, but it’s so valuable. And whether you go there or go to the Facebook group or whatever, whether you write a comment in this YouTube channel, we like community. That’s what we’re trying to foster here. Me being a sick person and having to deal with sickness, I know what it’s like. Sometimes you’re stuck in your house or you’re anxious about what you should and shouldn’t do. I know I live the life, so I get it. So that’s why it’s.
important for me to, you know, somebody said, Jill, why are you always answering all the comments that you get? You know, there’s this thing on social media where, what is it cool not to answer comments? I don’t get it. If you go to people, and I get it, there’s some people that have just thousands of comments. They can’t answer all that, of course. But you know, I mean, I think it’s really important. Sometimes it takes me a minute between all the platforms and Dr. Co’s site and my website and then YouTube and Insta, Facebook, oh my God.
But I really believe it’s important to provide answers to your questions, so feel free. We’re not that channel that you’re going to ask something and I’m not going to answer it. I will answer it. So please, if you have any questions, and I can’t list 100 paragraphs, but a simple question, just put them in the comments and I’ll answer you. That’s it. I’m done. I know I go off, people. I’m sorry. I just get passionate about all this. I don’t want people to unnecessarily suffer. And this is why we do so much free stuff.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so if you’re interested in the group coaching calls with Jill, with any of the other resources, you can find all of that at kidneystonediet .com. And yeah, we appreciate you leaving comments below any questions you might have, but if you want to have your voice featured on a future episode, the number is 773-789-8763 and we will feature you and everyone else who’s left a voicemail as well already. We appreciate each and every one of you. And speaking of appreciation, we appreciate you for tuning in, for tuning in, for sharing with people who can also benefit from this information, from giving it a thumbs up, from leaving comments, from subscribing to the channel. All of that helps us reach as many people as we can. So we really appreciate it. And I think with that, we will wrap for this week.
Jill Harris
Thanks everybody have a great week.
Jeff Sarris
Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.
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