This week, Jill discusses the topic of sweet potatoes and their relation to kidney stone prevention. She addresses the misconception that sweet potatoes should be avoided. Jill explains that sweet potatoes can be safely consumed as long as calcium needs are met. She emphasizes the importance of a balanced diet, portion control, and getting the right information to prevent kidney stones.
Takeaways
- Sweet potatoes can be safely consumed as part of a kidney stone prevention diet.
- It is important to meet daily calcium needs when consuming foods high in oxalate.
- A balanced diet with a variety of foods and portion control is key to preventing kidney stones.
- Getting the right information and taking action are crucial for maintaining kidney health.
Sound Bites
- “Sweet potatoes didn’t give you stones.”
- “Am I gonna eat all of them tonight? That would be no.”
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Misconception about Sweet Potatoes and Oxalate
03:21 Portion Control and Meal Planning
04:13 Flexibility in Diet and Nutrient Density
04:39 Pairing Sweet Potatoes with Calcium
07:38 Common Sense Approach to Kidney Stone Prevention
08:59 The Importance of Early Education
10:30 Taking Action for Kidney Health
12:22 Conclusion
Jeff Sarris (00:00)
So how much oxalate is in sweet potatoes? Let’s find out.
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 (00:19)
And I’m Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse. And I’m happy to see you.
Jeff Sarris (00:22)
So yeah, somehow. Happy to see you too. But yeah, somehow, somehow, somehow, we do not have sweet potatoes, specifically on the podcast.
Jill Harris (00:30)
yeah, Jeff’s like, well, what are you thinking for today? I’m like, all I’m telling you is we don’t have, the reason I thought about this is because I made a batch of sweet potatoes last night. I’m like, we never talked about sweet potatoes on YouTube. And I know from talking to people every single day in private consults, everyone has taken them off the table. Jill, there are 28 milligrams of oxalate in a cup of sweet potatoes. Well you get 100? Unless.
You have malabsorption. You get 100, you have 100 milligrams of oxalate every day. You can have that. Thank you, Jeff. Unless your doctor has told you otherwise. People who have had bariatric surgeries, who have malabsorption issues due to bowel disease, colitis, Crohn’s, diverticulitis, diverticulosis, any of the things you may have, cancer, stop. Some people will be on lower.
Jeff Sarris (00:59)
Again, you get a hundred meaning per day, right?
Jill Harris (01:27)
daily amounts of oxalate. Typically it’s around 50. Talk to your doctor. Talk to your doctor. So, but most of you can safely have 100 milligrams of oxalate a day. And even though sweet potatoes are a cup, for a cup of sweet potatoes is 28 milligrams of oxalate, I still eat them. Well, Jill, you don’t get stones. I haven’t gotten a stone, but my family has tons of them. And I don’t want stones, so I follow the things I ask you.
I follow. I do the same thing. I’m under 100 every day by far. So why did people get, I have a lot of patients that say, well, sweet potato gave me my stones. Sweet potato, look, sweet potatoes didn’t give you no stones. They didn’t give you stones. The three of them you ate every day could have been without you getting your calcium. So it’s always the same story, folks. You overate a couple foods.
that were super high in oxalate and you never got your calcium needs met because no one thinks about calcium until they have a kidney stone or they have osteoporosis. Then all of a sudden the doctor’s like, what the hell Samantha, you’ve never had calcium? Well, I’ve been here every year my whole life. You never told me about it, doc. Well, now we’re talking about it. But then now Samantha has osteopenia. So what the hell? How do you know? We don’t know what we don’t know. Jill, why do you get so passionate? Because I do.
Because people are sick. So how would we know? Why isn’t every primary saying, by the way, Sally Mae, when Sally’s 22, make sure you get enough calcium. You gotta feed your bones. You’ve got to. It’s important. So what are we talking about now? yeah, I looked in my hat. It’s orange. If you’re watching YouTube, sweet potatoes. So I just made a whole batch of them.
Am I gonna eat all of them tonight? That would be no. I’m gonna split it in half and I may have a whole sweet potato for the day, but I’ll have half for lunch, half for dinner, or I’ll just have half of a half today, a quarter of a sweet potato, which will be about a cup, so I’ll have 28 milligrams maybe each day. But then I’m gonna take that sweet potato, what I’m thinking.
I’m thinking about dinner tonight, I’m gonna take that sweet potato and I’m gonna put a bunch of vegetables, I’m gonna make some kind of balsamic drizzle, I’m gonna load that sweet potato up, and by the way, I have loaded sweet potato things in the meal plan and they’re friggin’ delicious. So sometimes, even though I do eat meat, sometimes I just want veggies. So I call myself a flexitarian, I eat what I feel like. Meaning some days I’m just having veggies, the next day I’ll have meat, I do what I wanna do.
but all within normal portion size, all within reason and making sure that most of my meals are nutrient dense, meaning I have a lot of different nutrients on my plate. Always protein is on my plate, whether it’s in meat form or plant form, and always things that have fiber, a lot of fiber. What’s a lot? Huh? Go ahead.
Jeff Sarris (04:34)
Now with those sweet potatoes now, would you pair it with some sort of calcium?
Jill Harris (04:39)
Yes, I will lots of times I’ll have my low sodium cottage cheese definitely Thank you for bringing that up or I will have a glass of my ripple milk or my fair like milk depending on what I feel like or I will load that up with a Greek yogurt drizzle So I will definitely have it with calcium and when you do that, so you could say well Jill I want more than a cup Okay, you could have two cups if you want to waste not waste if you want to use
30, 30, about 60 milligrams of oxalate on that food. You still have 30 left, whatever, 20 something left. You can do that. But you know, if you’re pairing it with calcium, you’re not going to absorb all that oxalate anyway, right? So you’ll be just fine. Have a sweet potato. If it makes you nervous, cut it in half. That’s absolutely fine. Have it with the calcium containing product. And guys, I promise you.
My patients, well I don’t believe this Jill, next time you do a follow up stand, eat the damn sweet potato, have it with some calcium and you’ll see your oxalates under 30. I promise you. So when people say you’re a little bit too big for your britches, my mother used to say that to me when I was little, Jill, because I get passionate about things, which is a nice way to say I get a little in your face about it. But I’m…
I’m not being too big from my britches mom in heaven. I’m not. I’m looking at urine collections every single day. That is the majority of my phone calls. The people want me to go over their urine collections so they can have a better understanding, so they can have a great office visit with their doctor. When you’re educated, you get better time and more knowledge from your doctor because they will sit down and say,
Boo Boo Kitty knows what’s up here. Let me sit down and take a breath, have a cigarette and relax and talk to this woman. Hopefully they’re not still smoking in the office. Back in the day they did. Back in the day they were smoking their office. Crazy. Wild. Anyway, and doctors used to promote. Here’s Camel Cigarettes or Lucky Strike. It’s the one that, crazy. Anyway, so it’s very, you will have a great doctor office visit.
Jeff Sarris (06:36)
Wild.
Jill Harris (06:54)
when you understand what your values mean for you. So, when I, yes.
Jeff Sarris (06:58)
Yeah, 25 years, 25 years of urine collections you’ve looked at. So it’s not like you’re just, I’m going to figure this out as I go. 25 years is thousands and thousands of urine collections and then seeing the results afterwards.
Jill Harris (07:06)
Nope.
thousands It’s crazy and Seeing the results so when Tommy says okay, I’m gonna I’m gonna have a sweet potato Jill and when I call you for the follow -up We’ll go over and Tommy’s like well there you go It was great, and you just pay mind to the rest of oxalate you had you got your calcium needs met every day I’m telling you folks this works. It just works and What it what is working? There’s no snake oil here. This is all
As Dr. Koh always says, street girl sense. It’s just common sense. He calls me street girl. It’s just common sense. When we eat a wide variety of foods within normal portion size and we get our calcium needs met, in most cases, we get an 80 % reduction in new stone formation. A lot of my patients never get another stone again. So I would say most.
because they’re really, listen, too, if you’re throwing money at me, you’re really interested in changing, and those people tend to really be successful because they’ve had, so in the last week, I know today’s only whatever day it is, Monday, but in the last seven days, I’ve had two people that lost a kidney due to kidney stone scarring and the surgeries. So one of the reasons people I know will say, Jill, you’re dramatic or you’re a little over the top, you’re not hearing what I hear everyday, folks.
You don’t hear what I hear every single day. They’ve had to reconstruct their ureter because of all the scarring or because of all the ureteroscopies and everything they’ve had. They’re on dialysis now because of all the issues they’ve had with kidney stones. They have lost a kidney and now they’re panicked because you can live with one kidney, you can’t with zero. So…
Jeff Sarris (08:59)
And this is your passion because if you could have connected with them before, think about what you could have done, how you could have helped.
Jill Harris (09:05)
Yes, yes, yes, yes. So it just kills me that even in this day and age, look, when I first started my career, nobody was talking about kidney stone prevention. They really weren’t, not like this, right? So, you know, now that we’ve built this platform together, Jeff, and we’re able to reach more people, I just can’t imagine any more satisfying work than what we’re doing here because even with…
the internet and all the information out there. The other bad thing about that, there’s great because people have access to good information, but people also have access to information that’s not very consistent, congruent, and accurate. So, you know, we’re always battling against that too. Kidney stones can be prevented the majority of the time. You just have to get the right information, which you’re doing here, and you also have to put in the work. I’m not an angel.
People call me an angel, miraculous, I’m not. I am giving you information in a way that most people can understand and then you’ve got to do the work. And I’ve said this I don’t know how many times in my career. The reason we are successful is because our patients are doing the work. Our students and patients and viewers are doing the work. So if you want to get anywhere with health in your life, you must put in the work.
You must, Jill, I don’t have time. You must find the time because illness will take it away later. It will. So it’s just, I just, you know, my son graduated high school this past weekend. He went to his prom, he’s done, he’s on his way to NYU now in August. And I still found time. So it was a very busy weekend, but I still found time. I made the time to work out yesterday at the gym.
And so it’s a priority for me because I’ve been so sick in my life. I know what that’s like and God, I want to avoid it at all costs. So I do my part. So what I’m asking all of you here is, yes, we have the information for you all free of charge right here. It’s right here for you. Anything you want to know, but God bless America, you better put it to work. Don’t just come here consuming information and think you’re doing something. That is not an action. That’s just consuming.
Now you want to take that information and step by step put it into action. Take the kidney stone prevention course. It’s the best information money can buy. The cheapest online kidney stone prevention course with the most experience. Along with that course comes all these beautiful, it’s organized in a way, Jeff, organized it all. Each video will have all kinds of handouts to go with it.
right there, all accessed. You get to keep that for the rest of your life from the timing of this video anyway. And so take advantage of it. You can’t just listen to this video and not do something after. So eat a wide variety of foods, sweet potatoes are back on your table. Just don’t eat for a day like my bodybuilder patients do. Eat it with a normal portion, get your calcium needs met every day and bring them on back people. They’re delicious.
Jeff Sarris (12:00)
you
Yeah. So that’s it. If you’re ready to do the work, head over to kidneystonediet .com free and premium products over there. And thank you so much for tuning in. YouTube thinks you’ll like this video, that video. I still don’t know which side it’s on, but if you’re watching on YouTube, that’s the video they think you’ll like most and we’ll see you next time.
Jill Harris (12:39)
Bye guys.
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