Calcium may dissolve kidney stones?!

Calcium may dissolve kidney stones? Let's talk about that. 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.

And it's me, Jill, your kidney stone prevention nurse. Hi, Jeff.

Hi! So, Jill has been at this for nearly 30 years now, preventing kidney stones for thousands and thousands of patients. And today, we're talking about calcium.

We're talking about dissolving kidney stones, calcium. What are we actually talking about here?

Well, you know, I get all kinds of crazy questions in my line of work. And so, there's some people out there that actually think that their doctor told them to do something with calcium because it's going to help dissolve stones instead of lessen stone risk. So, you know, are they going to dissolve kidney stones?

Well, no. Are they going to help prevent kidney stones? Yes.

Now, you could say, "Jill, my stone is calcium-based." You could also say this: "Jill, I have too much calcium in my urine. Why would I want to get more calcium?" This is also a very common question. For those of you who have high urine calcium, and you're only going to know that you have that because you have done a urine collection, a 24-hour urine collection, the whole reason I beg you guys to get your doctor to order that, and if your doctor says no, find another doctor that will order it.

I have a blog post at kidneystonediet.com on the exact tests, this is what it's titled, "What tests exactly do I need for a 24-hour urine collection?", something like that. You need to get that test done because many of you are being told that you're a kidney stone former, but that you're just always going to be. But that's because no one's tested your urine, and they don't know that you have high urine calcium.

And that's one of the biggest reasons people are making kidney stones. So, it really kills me that doctors don't order these tests. And I think a lot of doctors don't order them because they don't know what to do with them when they come back.

But see, you have me. So, all day long, I'm helping people understand their urine collections, so they can have better doctor office visits and talk to their doctor about it, educated. So, the whole calcium thing.

The reason you need enough calcium, and this is 1,000 milligrams for women and men, and 1,200 milligrams of calcium per day for postmenopausal women, do not go over those goals. You need that much because you have bones and you need to make sure they stay strong. I'll be 62 in a few weeks, and I want to get out of my chair in a few years.

So, it's very important to me to be able to keep my strength, because as you get older, it flies away if you don't take care of it. So, calcium is important for bone health, and then in kidney stones, what it does is it lowers urine oxalate. So, when you have calcium paired along with something that's higher in oxalate, like sweet potato, instead of all that oxalate absorbing into your body, the oxalate from the sweet potato, if you have it with a non-dairy milk or a milk, some calcium-based product, when you have it with the higher oxalate product at the same time, not 2 hours later, at the same time, then oxalate and calcium go through general metabolism, they meet each other in the small intestine, they join, they leave through the stool.

If there's no calcium there, because most of you, if any of you, get enough calcium every day, and you certainly aren't pairing it with, you know, maybe spinach or whatever, because you don't know anything about this yet, you know, it's very easy to, you have the oxalate food, like a spinach salad. Of course, you didn't have calcium, so spinach cannot leave through the stool, stool, the oxalate, the oxalate gets reabsorbed back into your blood.

I think I kind of said that right, whatever. I think I did. So, the sweet potato breaks down.

We have some oxalate as a waste product. It goes through your the regular general metabolism process. It gets to your intestine, and it's looking for calcium, but you didn't have any calcium.

So now, the small intestine is reabsorbing that oxalate, and that's how you get higher oxalate levels. That's a Jill explanation, which tends to be crude, but everybody can understand it, okay? Of course, for real scientific explanations, you guys can go to my mentor site, Fred Coe, that's C-O-E, and his website is kidneystones.uchicago.edu.

All the science lives there. I'm the interpreter of that science, okay?

Yeah, and just to be aware, it is science-heavy. It is like you have to love that degree, because Fred is a scientist, a researcher for years in this topic. So, he's speaking in that in that vein.

But it's I mean, it's super helpful when you want to dive very deep, but just be warned.

Yes, he's a nephrologist, and he's actually in a couple weeks, he's it's it starts with an F, I forget how you say this because it's in a different language, but he is being honored, he's 88 years old, he is being honored, and there's hundreds of people coming from all over the country to honor him for his work that he has done as a nephrologist and researcher for all these decades in kidney stones.

So, I'm going to see a lot of my doctor friends, because most a lot of my business comes from doctor referrals, because they don't, you know, they're not reading these urine collections the way I will, or and talk about diet is the real thing, right? So, that's where I come in. But, yeah, so he's being honored.

It's going to be it's going to be really special. It really is. So, I'm really looking forward to that, and he earns it.

That man, he's 88, he works 7 days a week, once in a while his wife makes him take a day off, but his he is passionate about what he does. What were we talking about, Jeff?

But, yeah, so just with calcium…

Oh yeah, calcium!

Yeah, the importance is, yeah, we're not talking as much about dissolving with kidney stones, but preventing. We are removing the oxalate from the urine with calcium, with getting enough calcium, not too much and not too little.

Right. And so for you guys that have high urine calcium, you could be very confused as to why you need more. Well, a lot of you, because you're not following the Kidney Stone Diet goals, because you didn't know about them yet, you were making your stone, eating high salt, eating high sugar stuff, eating too much meat products.

And what happens is the three goals out of the six of the Kidney Stone Diet—the salt and the added sugar and the meat protein—are all there, they are in place to help lower urine calcium. Because when you eat too much sugar, added salt, and meat, what happens is that is pulling calcium from your bone and dumping it dumping it into your urine.

So, you guys will have too much calcium in your urine, and along with maybe you're not drinking enough and you're not peeing enough, so all these calcium crystals are sitting in there, calcium's looking for oxalate, phosphate's looking for calcium, and all these little crystals find each other like magnets and form stones.

So, a lot of you will have something that's called, it's known simply as IH, but it stands for idiopathic hypercalciuria, which is a big fancy word that means Bobby has too much calcium in his urine, hypercalciuria, and idiopathic means there's not a medical reason for this. We've ruled out diet. Bobby's doing the diet.

We've ruled out other medical conditions, parathyroid issues, vitamin D deficiency, all these things, and this patient still has high urine calcium. At that time, it is diagnosed as IH, we have no medical reason for it, slap on a diuretic, and that's when Bobby will go on a diuretic. And that diuretic will help save calcium.

It will be it will keep calcium from being thrown into the urine like that. So, you always try diet first. If the diet isn't working by itself, lots of times this is genetic, it happens in families.

This is why people say everybody in my family has it. If they all did a urine collection, many of them or most of them would also have high urine calcium. So, don't you dare let a healthcare professional say, "Oh, you're just a stone maker," and you haven't done a urine collection?

In my almost 30 years, I've never seen just somebody who's a stone maker. I've looked at thousands of urine collections. And me, I get more passionate about this because I'm a patient with all my bowel issues and cancer stuff, and I'm like, don't ever say things to me that's going to make me give up hope.

That just drives me nuts, because there are there is stuff that you can do. And plus, the Kidney Stone Diet is just a healthier diet. So, you want calcium because you want—forget about kidney stones—you want calcium because you've got to feed your skeleton.

And you can get non-dairy calcium sources, you don't have to use dairy anymore, okay? You can lower your salt and lowering added sugar, everybody should be doing that for heart and kidney health, okay? Getting enough fluids, well, that's the best.

Moving around, lower oxalate, all of it, all of it will be on the healthier side for you in general. I can't tell you how many of my patients have gone off their metformin, they don't take their they don't take their blood pressure medications anymore simply because they got a kidney stone that scared the hell out of them, and now they're like, "Whatever you say, Jill, I'm doing." Boom, boom, boom!

The medicines disappear. Why? Because of me?

No, because Bobby's working his butt off now. And now he doesn't make new stones and also, he doesn't have high blood pressure! And he feels better than he ever has.

I know, I'm boring myself. I'm sorry, but I'm just saying…

No, no, no, and on that too, it's not Jill has not said stop taking this. This is the doctor who would have prescribed this would then discover that the person no longer needs that medication.

Yes, thank you, Jeff! Yeah, I'm not saying get off your When you when you follow the Kidney Stone Diet, most of you, you'll go back to the doctor's office, he'll take your blood pressure, he's like, "What are you doing? What are you doing?

My god, your blood pressure's never been better. I don't even think you need the meds," and they'll start weaning them off the blood pressure medications to make sure that they don't need them, and then they get off of them. So, thank you for bring— I'm not telling you get off meds, people.

Thank you, Jeff. God bless. Never, ever.

You listen to your doctor's advice. But what I'm saying is the nice side effect of paying attention to what you put in your mouth will leave you with a heck of a lot, you see these pills? Instead of going from the big pill, I'm looking at pill boxes for those listening on Spotify or other places, you get rid of your pill boxes, folks.

I have it because I need vitamin D and B12, otherwise I don't take any pills, a synthroid. But, so, that's what I'm talking about, folks. You need calcium.

It will help lower your risk for kidney stones because it will lower urine oxalate, and you need it because you have a skeleton.

Yeah, I think that is a perfect overview. And if you want to dive deep into everything Kidney Stone Diet related, all the goals, the sodium, the sugars, the meat protein, all the things that you need to consider, go to kidneystonediet.com, and you can find all of that information right there. And even if you want to get a weekly email from Jill, absolutely free, right in your inbox, just drop your email address there on the home page and you'll hear from Jill every week.

So…

And we give a lot of special deals only to the newsletter folks, you know. There's like 40,000 people on that newsletter.

Yeah, and that brings everyone It brings you into the community of like-minded people who are all in pursuit of the same thing, and that's to prevent future stones. So with that, I think we'll wrap, and we'll see you next week.

Have a good week, everybody!