Coffee caused my kidney stones

The following is designed to entertain and inform, not provide medical advice. Always consult your doctor before starting any new treatment. Spire.

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 I'm Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse. Hi, Jeff.

Hi. I like that the glasses match the hoodie.

I would like to say, "Oh, do they?" But I planned it. I actually I do I didn't plan it. I saw my glasses here at my desk.

I'm like, "Ooh, look cute with my hoodie." I'm not above accessorizing, people. I'm going to tell you right now, not above it.

Yeah, of course. Well, yeah, it's it's part of the fun. It's part of what can bring you joy.

Listen, and it does bring me joy. And, you know, I'm the only broad on the internet that's trying to assessor- accessorize her hoodies, you know, cuz it's basically all I wear, these tank tops, gym wear. People are like, "Why do you?" Well, I'm too lazy to undress myself and then dress into my gym clothes.

So, if I'm already in my gym clothes, I'm set for the day, baby. There's no excuse not to go to the gym, and I did go to the gym this morning. So, there's that.

Yeah, it's good. It's a little habit, habit builder.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, little habit stackers, right?

So, I'm always aware. And I'm I'm lucky, people are like, "Well, you're a nurse." I'm like, "Listen folks, this is a step up from freaking scrubs!" Look I used to wear scrubs. Now, I'm basically in a gown, a prom dress, come on.

Right? I just became a nurse cuz I wanted to be comfortable. "Ooh, you get to wear scrubs, I'll sign up for that.

Lawyer? No, you got to wear a suit. Hell no." No.

Yeah. No.

So, we were going to go to another one of the comments this week to dive in. Yeah, so this is a question from Joey. And what do you say we dive right in here?

Let's go.

So, Joey said, "Not sure what I'm doing wrong because my doctor told me the reason I'm getting kidney stones is because I drink coffee. I have oxalate stones and I was drinking one cup in the morning while driving to work. I only drink water, and on the weekends beer.

And that one cup of coffee caused me nothing but headaches. I was getting kidney stones left and right. So, I stopped drinking coffee and no more kidney stones.

I then started drinking coffee again about a year later and, bam, more stones. I was drinking tons of water on a daily basis to flush the coffee out of my system, but it didn't work. Can you suggest what I can do to prevent these stones if I drink a cup of coffee a day?" And look at Finn there.

Yeah, Finn. He was He was pawing at my leg. Okay.

Yo, Joey! Here's what I'm going to say. That cup If you're having a cup of coffee on the way to work, that is not causing your kidney stones.

I am a nurse. I do not override anything a doctor says. I am just giving you my opinion, Joey, okay?

So, one cup of coffee a day is not going to cause a kidney stone. It's just not going to. That's not happening.

So, what I'm concerned about is you're not telling me what your diet's like, okay? So, you're drinking alcohol, which is totally fine, I don't have a problem with that. It's fine.

But, you know, are you How are you eating over the weekend? How is your salt intake? How is your sugar intake?

You said you're drinking water, so that's awesome. Is it enough? I'm sure you're already paying attention to oxalate, but are you getting enough calcium?

How are you with your Are you overeating meat? Joey, you are not forming kidney stones, recurrent kidney stones because you're having a cup of coffee on the way to work. So, that is my opinion, and I think anybody in the kidney stone world would agree with me.

So, the first thing I would ask your doctor is, "Doctor, can I do a 24-hour urine collection so we can find out why I'm making kidney stones?" Now, remember, Joey said, "I was drinking coffee, I made stones. I stopped drinking coffee, I didn't make stones." How long did you stop coffee for? It takes a minute for stones to form, so I want to say that.

You know, certain a lot of people will say, "I was doing this, I was making stones. Then, I drank Chanca Piedra. I made no stones.

Then, I stopped taking it. Boom, stone!" But was that stone forming while you were drinking the Chanca Piedra, folks? It doesn't happen overnight.

Stones don't come overnight. Now, some stones grow faster than others, some people faster, but not 2 months, typically not 6 months, they can take a long time before they show up on imaging. You may have little bips of something, they're not even showing up.

Could have them for years. So, I guess my point is this, it's not one cup of coffee going on the way to work. That is no way, 100% not causing your kidney stone.

It is looking at your overall diet and other things that are going on. Get a 24-hour urine collection. Get that done so you can see why you're forming stones.

I wish people would listen when I ask them to ask their doctor to get that, all of them. Most do, I wish everybody because that is the only way you can figure out why you're forming kidney stones. One cup of coffee a day is not causing you to have a kidney stone.

It's not. What is your diet like, Joey? What is it like?

What is your salt and added sugar, what is it like? How much water are you drinking? Are you getting your calcium needs met?

What are you doing after you're drinking booze on the weekends? Are you eating health food? I doubt it!

Because I mean even I, I have a couple glasses of wine, I'm like, "Oh, shit! I'm having pie tonight, baby!" I mean, it's just not what we as humans do! I know people are like, "How does she know?

She don't know what I do." People when they get buzzed, they ain't looking for healthy food. No one's ever like, "Get me a bag of cucumbers, honey. Let's party!" No one, no one does this.

So, look at your whole diet. It's not a cup of coffee, Joey. Please, continue having your coffee, but if you get nervous about that, like I said, do a 24-hour urine collection.

You'll see why you're making stones. It's not a cup of joe, Joey.

Yeah, and that is also a service you provide is the urine analysis, which is We haven't talked about it for a little bit, but it's very valuable to not only you get your results, but then to help you understand what the results are and what you're looking at, and then prepare you for a doctor's visit. How do you have this conversation about what's going on?

You're already a step above where the average person who's coming in completely blank will be. So, that's a very valuable service.

It's It's It is a very valuable service. And any patient, and I've had so many take obviously do that consult, they'll all say, "Oh, my god, I had no idea!" And so, the best thing is, again, I made that service available to people once I got through once I went through my cancer, and I'm like, "Man, I wish there was somebody prepping me for these doctor office this oncology visit, because I had no idea." And then I wasted all that time.

I didn't look knowledgeable. There's a million different reasons why I did it. Then, you try to get along with the go through the portal to ask questions, they take forever to get back to you.

So, that service is really valuable because if you're educated going into it, if you understand what those values mean, number one, you can have a better conversation with the doctor. Number two, if the doctor doesn't talk about a value that maybe we talked about in our consult, you can say, "Yo, doc, what about the citric acid?" "Oh, yeah, let me let me look at this." You know, because they're busy and running and all this stuff, okay?

And the other thing is if you go in and look educated and look interested as a patient, you just get better service from doctors. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but you there's so many people that go into office visits that really don't care. Let's just use this example.

Okay? There's a lot of patients that I've had that are diabetics, and they're like, "Yeah, Jill, I'll just take more insulin. I'm not giving up candy," okay?

This is the kidney stones got them to talk to me, but then they're telling me about all the things that they've let go. And so what I hear from doctors is, "Look, Jill, why am I going to do these urine collections? Nobody makes changes." They don't.

But the whole reason I'm successful for 25 years is because my patients make changes. So, yes, you may say, "Yeah, but you given them the information." But they sought it out. So, I don't agree with that.

So, for the patients that do ask for the urine collection, please doctor, order it for them for them. Obviously, they want to do it. They're interested.

So, order it. Joe, get a urine collection done, okay? Get it done.

You can have a cup of coffee. I have a cup of coffee every day because otherwise no one would want to talk to me. And then I also That's caffeine, one cup.

And then sometimes I have a cup of decaf later on because I can't handle I'm old, Joey. I can't handle caffeine past 12:00 now. But, you can have coffee.

It's It's It's I want you to get a urine collection done. I also want you to look at your diet because that's why you're probably making kidney stones, Joey, not one cup of coffee on the way to work. The end.

Yeah, so important.

I know I went back there again, but it's just like these are the kinds of things that people think, you know, and then he's not having his coffee, and also he's saying, "I got rid of coffee. I'm all good." No, you're not. There's no way.

You're making stones from a cup of coffee. So, look at your diet and the doctor should be saying, "Let's look at your diet. Let's do a urine collection.

We're going to see exactly why you're making stones," because it's certainly not a cup of Starbucks every day, it's not.

Yeah.

All right, I'm really done.

But, yeah, I mean, that was a great question because I'm glad that he said that because, yeah, we don't know what we don't know. He might not know that a urine collection is even an option, is even the first step. And that's like we've we've brought it up a lot on the show.

We don't talk about it every week, but that is like, would you say that's the most important first step, or would you say that sort of how does that rate in terms of like you have a stone, now what?

Well, I would say the so if you have a kidney stone, the most important thing you can do start with water and get a urine collection. Those two things are the first thing to do, those two things are the number one things to do. So, you could do the water right away because that's really something you got to start hydrating.

But the urine collection goes right with it, and many doctors will say, "Eh, bug, we're going to wait for the second stone." Why? Why are you waiting for a second kidney stone before you're going to prevent them? I don't understand it, but many doctors say exactly those words, "Let's wait for a second stone." Why would we do that?

No one's waiting for me to get another tumor before they start restart my chemo, no one's doing that. And to me, it's just as serious. Two patients today, one was in the ICU because of sepsis from a kidney stone that got blocked in his ureter, and then when it gets blocked, your urine get can't you can't expel your urine, so now your kid you have hydronephrosis, your urine can't get out, you can get sepsis, ICU.

And then the other patient, I probably have this a couple times a month, nephrectomy because of the sepsis or because the kidney function, there's so nephrectomy means they remove the kidney, because one kidney always has so many stones, they're not being prevented, the scar tissue is unbelievable, and the kidney function is now enough where the it's removed.

I will never not get passionate about this. We must spread the word that urine collections must be ordered and done. They must be.

We are not going to wait for more illness before they get ordered. Patients, you're going to have to be your own advocate. In today post-COVID, our medical system is so antiquated, and behind, and overwrought, and our poor doctors and nurses and medical assistants and nurse practitioners and physician assistants, all of them are so overwrought with work.

We're not getting we're not getting the best care. We have to be our own advocates, we must be. So, you must do your part.

Don't be waiting for a doctor, nurse practitioner, anything to be on the ball 100%. You must do your own part, and I know you already are because you're listening to my big mouth and Jeff's handsome face. So, pay attention, be your own advocate, get your urine collections done.

And, Joey, thanks for That's a great question. I'm so glad that you wrote I'm so glad that you wrote that comment. I'm so glad.

Everyone comment in the YouTube section. I'm a little behind in answering, but I'm going to get to it this week.

Yeah, yeah, whether you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, any of your favorite podcast players, or watching the video on YouTube, if you can comment on the YouTube video, that keeps everything in one spot, everyone can interact with one another. There's also the Facebook the Kidney Stone Prevention Facebook group, which is another layer to this entire puzzle if you want to connect with over 17,000 other kidney stone patients who are going through the same exact thing as you.

Yep, and I'm I do a lot of Facebook Lives, so I'm always in and out of that page. I'm on that page every day, several times a day. I will do Facebook Lives for education for all kinds of things, so that's a very, very, very valuable page.

So, if you're on Facebook, Kidney Stone Prevention Diet, you'll find me there as well.

Yeah, and you can find that and everything else at kidneystonediet.com. And if you have a question, the phone number again is 773-789-8763, or you can record a voice memo on your phone and email that to [email protected], and we just love having everyone's voice, everyone's unique questions, unique experiences showcased on the show because there are other people in the same spot as you, but maybe they're not as courageous to get out there and sort of get in front of it and say, "Okay, I'm going to record this and have my voice on here." So, thank you to everyone who does, it means it means a lot to the entire community.

So, I think with that, we will wrap. Thanks again for tuning in and we will see you next time.

Thanks, Jeff. That was a great way to wrap that up. And, Joey, thanks so much for your question, it was brilliant.

Thank you so much.