In this episode of the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast, Jill Harris discusses the often-overlooked aspects of kidney stone prevention, particularly the significance of 24-hour urine collections. Jill emphasizes the importance of understanding urine collection results to effectively prevent kidney stones and improve overall health. The conversation also highlights the need for proper consultation and resources to aid in kidney stone prevention.
Takeaways
- Preventing kidney stones is crucial for overall health.
- 24-hour urine collections are essential for understanding kidney stone formation.
- Many doctors do not prioritize urine collections for kidney stone patients.
- High urine calcium can lead to kidney stones and osteoporosis.
- Dietary factors like salt and sugar can influence urine calcium levels.
- Regular follow-up urine collections are necessary to monitor progress.
- Consulting with experts can help interpret urine collection results.
- Patients should advocate for their health and request necessary tests.
- Understanding urine results can lead to effective dietary changes.
- Resources like kidney stone diet consultations can provide valuable support.
00:00 Introduction to Kidney Stone Prevention
00:04 The Importance of 24-Hour Urine Collection
08:26 Understanding Urine Collection Results and Follow-Up
Jeff Sarris (00:00)
So you want to prevent kidney stones, but here’s what nobody is talking about.
so this is what nobody talks about when preventing kidney stones. So this is a big one. This is something that you talk about, rightly so, because you have decades of experience, but nobody else seems to be talking about this and it’s so important for kidney stone prevention.
Jill Harris (00:22)
For the people that have been around for a while, they’re going to be like, 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? dramatic. It’s not. It’s not dramatic.
Jeff Sarris (00:27)
You
Jill Harris (00:50)
from somebody who’s been very sick in her life. Being sick is like one of the worst things ever. I really relate to all of you who watch me. 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 that 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. 24-hour urine collections, they’re a pain in the butt. I mean, you’re sitting home, you have 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, say, who hasn’t had a stone in for how long since you started the kidney stone diet? Tons of posts on there. Five years, seven years, two years, one years 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 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 urine calcium and 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 overworking. 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,
because I really am an expert in reading those urine collection results and then I will help you better facilitate your doctor office visits. Because a lot of them will say everything looks good. No, it doesn’t. I’ve never seen a urine collection. People will say, my doctor said it looks good. Well, why are you still making stones? 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 was 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 found me on Google and said, that old lady says to do a urine collection, let me get one done. Bobby gets one done.
The doctor goes, Bobby went over the urine collection with me. I said, talk to your doctor about these things. And then 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 milligrams a day. Yes, you did lower.
back 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?
is 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, look back. 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, kidneystone.uchicago.edu. That’s Dr. Fred Ko.
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. then hopefully too, you’ll schedule a consult with Makers.com. Really good at helping people understand them so they can have a better doctor office visit. And also teach you what really is a low-salt diet and how do you do that in low sugar and all the things. So it’s well worth the money for that consult for sure.
Jeff Sarris (09:44)
Yeah, I think that’s the little secret too, is the 24 hour urine collection without knowing the results, without understanding them, isn’t going to get people as far as they need to be. And like doctors will do their best, but at the same time, there’s only so much time and you’re able to sit down with them for more than just two or three minutes and break down exactly what the results are. So I think it’s so important. And you can find that at kidneystonediet.com. You can find that and the all access pass if you need it. If you’re looking for.
Jill Harris (09:50)
Hmm.
No. Yes.
Yes.
Jeff Sarris (10:11)
the cheapest price possible for a urine consult or any other one-on-one consult. All AccessPass members get 20 % off all one-on-one consults as well, along with everything else, kidney stone diet and kidney stone prevention. So you can find that and more at kidneystonediet.com. And I think with that we’ll wrap for this week and thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.
Jill Harris (10:33)
Get your urine collections ordered everybody. Have a great week.
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