I'm ready, Sarris. I'm ready. I'm going to do a I want to do a quick shout-out to my mother.
I'm thinking about her extra today and sending her love, and she knows why. So, wanted to do that. Okay, and then we're going to dive right into it.
And her husband, Mike. Okay, so we're going to dive right into this, and five natural remedies to fight kidney stones. You could do it right at home.
Okay. Number one: Stay hydrated. The reason we want you to stay hydrated: All fluids count, water is best.
We want you to produce 2 and a half to 3 L of urine a day. And people get annoyed when we say that, because they're like, "Okay, well how much do I have to drink? Why can't you just say drink eight glasses of water?" Because Jeff is 7 ft tall and I'm 4 ft tall—I'm exaggerating—but he's going to have to drink more water than me, most likely.
He's a big guy, and I'm a little girl, okay? So, we're we're going to I'll produce a lot more by drinking a lot less, okay? Also, it depends on your diet.
I eat a very low-salt diet. Somebody who is my size and eats a very high-salt diet may have to drink more than me, cuz they're going to retain water; I will not. So, we at the Kidney Stone Diet, we are asking you to how much to produce.
How you get there is based upon your entire lifestyle. Typically, doctors will tell each patient to drink 100 ounces of fluid a day. That's what they will say.
I don't love it. Why? Because, again, what about somebody who's 4'11"?
They'll be swimming. Then we got to worry if she's trying to drink so much fluid, how is she going to eat? So, my patients that come to me that say, "My doctor told me to drink 100 ounces a day, Jill, and now I've lost 10 lb, because I can't I have no room to eat." And so, I am not telling anybody to override a I don't override a doctor's order as a nurse, but I just want you to I want you to be educated.
So, if a doctor does generically say the 100 ounces to you, just say, "But, Doc, I Look at how little I am. Do you think I should really drink that much?" And then they may think, you know, and say, "Oh, yeah, you are a little bit of a thing. How about let's start with 80 ounces?" Even when, so a big guy like Jeff comes to me, and the doctor says 100 ounces, I don't have a problem with that.
He could probably drink 100 ounces. But I will tell Jeff to do that slowly. If Jeff isn't used to drinking any water, how the hell is he supposed to drink 100 ounces tomorrow?
He's not going to be able to. He's going to get very overwhelmed, he's going to be locked up in his bathroom, and he's going to give up, because he's like, "There's no way I can do this." So, I always tell patients, "Look, if you're only drinking two glasses of water now, then add one more water each day for this week. And then the next week, add two more glasses of water each day," and so on, and so on, until you get to that amount that you that you can deal with.
It may take several weeks, so I like to tell people to do things step-by-step. Once you feel a little bit better about getting one of your goals taken care of, you get your confidence, you feel like, "Oh, shoot. I can do this," then you're ready to move to the second thing.
Most of you doing all these goals at once will really have a hard time, so start slow, okay? Number two: Stop eating spinach and almond products. Stop it.
Lower your oxalate. In the Kidney Stone Diet, we give you 100 mg of oxalate a day, and you can easily eat most foods. Go to kidnystonediet.com to get your oxalate list.
We use the Harvard list because we've had a lot of success from it for decades, so we know that those values are pretty darn good. Anything not on the Harvard list, and there's videos on this channel that will help you know, that you can watch and go more in depth about it, anything not on the Harvard list, we say have once or twice a week, twice cuz you may have a leftover.
Don't throw your food out. Get your calcium needs met every time you have a food that hasn't been studied. Not a problem, okay?
So, you can still eat things like sweet potatoes and chocolate, you just also have to get your calcium needs met. So, stop eating the highest oxalate foods over and over in any quantities you want without getting your calcium needs met. That's why people have high oxalate for the most part, then other people will have malabsorption issues.
That's That's separate, okay? The third way, the third natural remedy to lower your kidney stone risk: Get your calcium needs met. That means 1,000 mg for men and women a day, 1,200 for postmenopausal women.
Up to those amounts, not over. Never get more than 500 mg of calcium at a time because we don't want The body has a harder time absorbing it in great amounts, and so we don't want that left over in your urine, cuz once we have too much calcium left over in our urine and we're not peeing like we should, calcium's looking for the other minerals and salts to connect with and form a stone.
So, get your calcium needs met. I have many articles at kidnystonediet.com, the blog, that can go in depth about it, okay? There's also some videos on this channel about calcium.
Get your calcium needs met. I have never worked with anybody in all my decades who has said to me, "Don't worry about it, Jill. I get plenty." Not one.
And by the way, folks, forget about kidney stones, what about your skeleton? You need to get calcium so you do not so it helps minimize your risk of getting bone disease later on in life. In the kidney stone world, there's a lot of osteoporosis patients, okay?
So, these two diseases go hand in hand for many different reasons, and you can read all on my blog, kidnystonediet.com, okay? So, to recap right now, number one, natural remedy for kidney stone prevention, water. Number two is lower your oxalate, get rid of the almond products and the spinach.
And number three, get enough calcium based upon having menopause or not, and being a man or a woman. Number four, the fourth natural way to prevent kidney stones, home remedy, is stop overeating meat protein. Meat protein is anything that flies, swims, or runs, so that means poultry, that means fish and seafood, that means beef, okay?
Cuz a lot of people a lot of folks my age in my generation will be like, "I don't eat red meat, Jill." Meat is all meat and seafood. That means chicken and turkey, folks. That's meat, too, okay?
So, now, this can be confusing, and I beg of you, go to or just Google, just Google "Jill Kidney Stone Diet and meat protein." You're going to find two articles there. It separates how much meat protein to have versus total protein. Okay?
So, we're asking you to limit your meat consumption, because too much meat can break down into purines, then break down into uric acid, and that can form uric acid stones. Also, it can increase your oxalate and urinary calcium, so those are those are pre-courses precursors for calcium oxalate stones. So, it's complicated.
I'm just giving you these quickly in this one video, but we do have videos on YouTube and my blog at kidnystonediet.com that will help you figure out how much protein is right for you. So, for me for example, at my weight at 118 lb, I have about 55 g of meat protein a day, and maybe 30 g of other types of protein like Greek yogurt and like some eggs and like oatmeal and other chickpeas, there's vegetables I get protein from.
Sometimes here and there I'll use an egg white protein powder. There's many different sources: farmer's cheese, low-sodium Swiss cheese, there's many other sources. So, people will come to me and say, "Jill, I'm only having 50 g of protein total now." Well, no, it's different.
Meat protein is different from the total protein. Go to kidnystonediet.com, the blog, and you'll see two articles there on the protein. We Jeff put a calculator in there, so based upon your weight you can see how many grams of meat protein you can have a day, and then the other article will say, "Here's your total protein." Most people Most people can safely have up to 1.5 grams per kilogram a day of protein, and again, that's always confusing, the grams and kilograms.
Go to those articles and you can figure it out. But we do not I get a lot of patients who do keto and paleo, and now they make kidney stones, because they're overeating the meat protein and fish and seafood, and that then turns into uric acid, high uric acid on their urine collections, and now they're making uric acid stones, and that's really important.
So, don't overeat meat protein. Eat to fill your needs, and get your other protein from other sources, okay? Those articles will explain it.
Number five, the fifth home remedy to keep away kidney stones is salt and sugar. I'm going to put those together, okay? Salt and added sugar.
Too much salt is going to increase your urinary calcium for a lot of people. When we have too much calcium in our urine, this can contribute to calcium oxalate stones and calcium phosphate stones. So, that's why we're asking you to lower your sodium, 1,500 mg ideally of sodium a day for everybody.
And the American Heart Association says the same thing, it's not just us being a pain in the kidney stone world. We should all be getting 1,500 mg of sodium a day. So, people will say, "Jill said 1,500, let's go down to 800." Do not do that.
So, I always give people the range of 1,500 to 2,000, so if they do anything, they go a little bit more. The average person is getting anywhere between 3 and 5, 6,000 mg of salt a day. We're overeating salt.
And what happens when we do that in the kidney stone world? Well, whether you have them or not, you can increase your urine calcium. That's not good, because oxalate and phosphate can find her, connect to her in the urine.
I don't know why I call calcium a girl, but I do. And so, we want to lower urine calcium. When we have too much calcium in our urine, lots of times that has come from our bones, and that will increase our osteoporosis risk as well.
As I said before, those two diseases go hand in hand. So, we want people to lower their sodium. We have many videos on this YouTube channel about sodium, please look for that.
And then along with salt will be the sugar, the added sugar. There is a difference between added sugar and sugar. Sugar is naturally occurring, like an apple.
Added sugar has been put into a product, and you will find it in the ingredient list. Think yogurt. A lot of yogurts will have added sugar.
Greek yogurt with no added fruit or anything will have sugar in it, but it will be naturally occurring. You will know if you're living in the United States if sugar has been added to your product, our labels call it out. There will be a on your nutrition label, it will say sugar, and then underneath, if there is added sugar, it will list it separately, okay?
So, if you live in a country that your nutrition label doesn't parse out sugar and added sugar, look at the ingredients. There's a million different ways to put sugar in your products, and they're they're they're called different things, it's not just going to say sugar. Honey, if it's in your ingredient list, that's added sugar, okay?
Dextrose, anything with the o-s-e, that's added sugar. Sucralose, all these things are added sugar. There's a million different ways, like I said.
Dr. Coe has an article on his website that I wrote, there's a picture of the Cookie Monster, and if you go to kidnystonediet.uchicago.edu, it talks about sugar in that article and all the different ways it's snuck into your food. For sugar, we want 25 g of added sugar for women, 38 g of added sugar for men.
American Heart Association calls for the same limits. So, sugar, lowering your sugar is very important for obesity, for diabetes, for heart disease, really important, people. A lot of people have been educated in the added sugar aspect because of keto and paleo and everything, so I think, you know, a lot of food manufacturers, people were demanding lower sugar products.
And so when we demand things, folks, food manufacturers make them, because they have to answer to Wall Street. But I want you to recognize that when you see a product that is lower sugar, and the label up front will call "no added sugar", typically they've added more salt to those products, so pay attention. When you're looking at a nutrition label, look at all the things: calcium, salt, sugar.
Look for all of those things, okay? Because we tend to focus on the one thing. Like people who are really wanting to eat a high-protein diet, they never look at sugar, they never look at salt, right?
Their only focus on the protein. Or people who are so worried about added sugar in a yogurt, but don't realize that yogurt doesn't have barely any calcium, because there will be different calcium in different yogurts, so pay attention. People will say, "Jill, it just seems like so much." And it is, because these are new things for you.
It's new. So, have some grace, be patient with yourself. What we're asking you to change is going to make a healthier lifestyle, no matter what disease you suffer from, okay?
But it will take a second. So, these are five natural ways, these are five natural home remedies, or it's the Kidney Stone Diet, right? This is what we're talking about.
The Kidney Stone Diet is going to lower your kidney stone risk. That's the end of the story. I do want to say a couple other things, though.
You might see some home remedies listed on other websites or in the on the internet that say, "Take magnesium supplements." "Make sure to use citrus. Put some lemon in your water." you know, other things like that you may not need to do, so I don't agree with it. If your diet's already high in magnesium, you don't need a supplement, and a and a urine collection will tell you that, and a blood test will tell you that.
If you have a high urine pH based upon your 24-hour urine collection, that lead that can lead to calcium phosphate stones. And now other websites are generically telling you to add lemon or citric acid or Litholyt or Moonstone or any of those things, you got to be careful, folks, because you already may have higher amounts of something in your urine that you wouldn't know.
So, don't take anything generically unless you've done a 24-hour urine collection. Now, you could say, "Well, Jill, you're telling us to do the Kidney Stone Diet generically." Yes, but what is that going to hurt? Lowering your salt and sugar, drinking more water, getting enough calcium for your bones, making sure you're not overdoing oxalate, and not overeating meat protein all the time?
There's nothing that's going to hurt you with that, no matter what you suffer from, so I don't feel I don't feel that's generic advice, because any other healthcare institution is going to ask you to do that anyway, right? So, I don't, you know, it is a natural way to lower stone risk. People who follow the Kidney Stone Diet are going to lower their stone risk, and they'll be a lot healthier, right?
So, there's that. So, I don't feel bad about giving this advice because it's natural. People will say, "Jill, why can't I take Chanca Piedra?
I just want to do shit naturally." It's a You're telling me you'd rather take that pill or supplement or that leaf or whatever, when I'm telling you the Kidney Stone Diet is as natural as it gets? I don't understand why you'd want to try anything else. I don't.
Why would you want to take a potion or a pill or a powder, when you can just work on your diet? And in most cases, it doesn't get more of a natural remedy than that. I guess that's all I'm saying.
So, I'm always kind of like, when people say, "Yeah, but I want to take this pill, cuz I heard on Amazon that when people put this powder in their water, they stop making stones." I don't know about that. Maybe they didn't get a stone yet, okay? They will.
You don't get stones overnight, people. But there's nothing more natural. There is no better natural remedy than tightening up your diet: lowering sugar and added and salt, okay?
Lowering added sugar and salt, not overeating meat, getting your calcium needs met every day, drinking enough fluid so you're passing all these crystals and they're not clumping around in your urine in your kidney. And then, of course, lowering oxalate, okay? So, those are five natural ways to lower your kidney stone risk, five natural remedies.
Doesn't get Doesn't get better than that, but it's hard to do what we're asking you to do, so I don't want to be glib in saying this is easy. It takes some time, so be gentle with yourself as you're going through the process. And we have so many things at kidnystonediet.com to help you: free resources, we have the course, Jeff, the meal plans, what else?
I mean, we got smoothie e-books, we got everything, dessert e-books, everything. Very cheap, by the way.
