Does menopause cause kidney stones?

The following is designed to entertain and inform, not provide medical advice. Always consult your doctor before starting a new treatment. 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 also stumbling over all of my words today for whatever reason, but–

Well, that's what happens when you drink before the broadcast! I don't know, what can Jeff say?

What can I say?

No, I'm kidding, he's not. And I'm Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse. You know, when you do when you batch these episodes and we're talking a lot in between, we just have conversations because we love talking with each other, you know, it happens.

You just It's just It's okay, though. It's okay.

Yeah, it all It all works out.

We're not trying to be perfect here at Kidney Stone Diet. If you followed us long enough, we're not about perfection.. No.

And that's why portion, not perfection for the diet, too, is so important.

That's right, baby. That's right.

So, yeah, so we didn't get into a question last week, so what do you say we go right to the phones?

Let's go so folks don't hate us!

Hi, my name is Kim. I'm from Ontario, Canada, and my question is just regarding menopause and kidney stones. My sister started forming stones after she had a hysterectomy and had two surgeries a year for 10 years.

I'm 51 and just started last year, and I'm on my fourth surgery in a year. I had my urine analysis done over 48 hours, and all my normal my levels were in the normal range. So, I'm wondering if there's any hormone component.

My sister, who is now 55, is no longer forming stones. So, just wondering if there's any link. Thank you.

Bye.

Okay, it's a great question. I feel like we've talked about menopause here, but it could have been like in passing with other things. So menopause, I do like talking about it.

Of course, I've been through menopause. I'm going to be 60 this year, so I'm all done with that. I love it, myself.

Here's the deal. Jeff, are you there? All I see is your picture.

Yeah, so I am here. I just got to swap out the battery on my camera. I'll be right back.

All right, just as long as you're here. I'll keep blabbering. So, Kim's asking her sister went through menopause, and she started making stones.

Is there something to do with menopause and kidney stones? Well, you know, no. Not like there's no like cause and effect thing.

You're in menopause, now you have kidney stones. So, but there's things that can happen in menopause. First of all, Dr.

Coe, C-O-E, he's my mentor, he's at University of Chicago, there's an article on his website that we did, and it's called "Middle Age and Kidney Stones: Why Now?". So if you Google "kidney stones and middle age and kidney stones why now" and put Fred Coe, C-O-E, in your browser, you'll come up with that article. And in that article, there's some things that, you know, why are we getting kidney stones when we're older?

There's certain things like our pH goes up, that can be a factor. It could be There's a lot of a lot of it is they don't know why. Also, kidney stones may be presenting in middle age, but you could have had some of those stones when you were younger, they just never moved or caused any issues, so you didn't even know you had them.

There's that. But menopause specifically and kidney stones, menopause specifically and eating. So a lot of patients will say to me, I've worked with thousands of folks, thousands and thousands over the last almost 25 years, and I hear this every day, "Jill, Jill, I'm going through the change." For you younger folks, that's what we older folks called it, "We're going through the change." And "Jill, I'm just exhausted.

There's no way There's no way I'm going to make it throughout my life. I'm just exhausted now. I'm just going to sit down.

I'm going to sit down, I'm going to read the Reader's Digest, maybe do a crossword puzzle, and look at, you know, Card Sharks for the rest of my life, 'cause it's over. I'm going through the change." Ladies! It's not over!

Not over! So people will say, "Well, I'm exhausted. Menopause is making me tired." Is it menopause, per se, or is it the night the symptoms of menopause, like night sweats?

Okay? "Jill, I gained so much weight because of menopause." Is it menopause specifically, or because you're not sleeping well because of the night sweats, and again, no one's ever like, "You know, get me a sesame seed, get me a sunflower seed, get me some lettuce. I'm starving and cranky 'cause I didn't sleep well." No one's saying that!

You're going to eat junk, 'cause you want to immediately feel better. That's what we want to do. So we eat junk.

Lettuce ain't going to make us feel so great. A, you know, a Jujube will, so that's what we choose. So when we're going through menopause, and we're exhausted because of the symptoms we may be having, and of course, always speak to your doctor about those symptoms to see what they can do to lessen them.

So being tired, "Jill, I'm not exercising. I'm gaining weight." You're not exercising not because of menopause, but because of these symptoms, and you're tired now because of lack of sleep. So, again, nobody wants to exercise when they're not sleeping well.

So all of it goes hand in hand, but does menopause Will menopause mean you're going to get kidney stones? 100% no. Absolutely not.

But it can really change your lifestyle. The other thing, and ladies might get a little mad at me for saying this, but I've been through menopause, all my patients have been through menopause, and they'll come to me saying, "Well, it's just my time now to ride out the pasture," or I say a few things to them like this: we have been sold a bad bill of goods.

We are told that we're supposed to, we women, put out to the pasture when we have when we go through menopause. So we have in this mind that it's menopause, menopause, menopause. Now I'm going to get fluffy.

Now I'm going to be exhausted. So again, I always say this, whatever we tell ourselves over and over and over, we become. You are writing the story, you are telling yourself the story, and if you tell yourself that story enough, you will become that character.

You need to pick up a different pen and write a different story. So, are the symptoms of menopause a real thing? Absolutely, they are.

The night sweats are a real thing. Hot flashes are a real thing. Okay?

Real thing. They're embarrassing, they're uncomfortable. I remember one I remember one year I was driving on Lake Shore Drive, it was like 20 below, honest to God.

Luke, my then dog, was in the backseat, and I was having the biggest hot flash. I mean I took off all my clothes, I don't know how I didn't get in an accident, took off my scarf, my mittens, I rolled down the window, Luke was in the backseat shivering. That was not happening, I was so hot.

So hot flashes are a real thing with menopause. So, but this doesn't mean, ladies, you can't you can't continue a healthy lifestyle. Will it be harder during that initial period?

Absolutely. Do you Are you destined to be fluffy and exhausted for the rest of your life? Absolutely not.

I go to the gym, I eat a balanced diet, I am not overweight, I'm actually pretty fit for an old lady. I mean it is possible. The patients that work, and I'm not the anomaly, the people that I work with, same for them, but they had to get out of the notion that now that they're through going through menopause, they're going to fill in the blank.

It's not true. You can have a beautiful, healthy life. It will be a little tougher at first, but I promise you it gets better.

So, does menopause cause kidney stones? Not directly. But has your lifestyle changed now and you're eating more salt, more sugar, are you lowering your exercise, physical activity?

Are you, you know, all the things that are leading to an unhealthier lifestyle? Could be. Direct cause?

No. Otherwise every person who has had menopause would have a kidney stone. It's just not how it goes.

So, there's many different reasons people get kidney stones. Sometimes it's genetic things. It's always a little bit of diet, for sure, whether you're eating too much of a healthy food or not any healthy food, not getting enough fluids, being overweight, having diabetes, chronic kidney disease, all these things will play a part.

So it's even though we have a good time on this channel, kidney stone disease is rather complicated, and this is why we always say it's just not one factor. You'll always have to do the diet, and you know I'm going to tell you I want you to do that anyway, 'cause it's just a healthy diet, but it will lower your stone risk.

But some of you, it may not lower it enough that you keep getting stones, and that's in and of itself why you need to do a 24-hour urine collection. You're not going to know why you're forming stones unless you get that urine collection. You will not know, and you could have some genetic things going on that you would never know until later on you get bone disease or more stones, so you must get that.

If your doctor says no to a 24-hour urine collection, I want you to push back, and I want you to say, "I want to do everything I can, Doctor, not to get another stone. I would like that urine collection." Get it done, people, okay? But menopause is there's not there's not a direct cause for menopause means you're now going to make kidney stones.

If your sister made them and you said you make them, but your lab results are normal, I'm going to push back a little bit on that too, Kim, because lots of times lab reference ranges are much too generous, and you should actually be lower or higher on some of the things the lab reports on. And if your doctor's just looking at the reference ranges, because they and that's what they're going by, they may not know.

I also have a urine consult, it's only 30 minutes long, we get right to the facts, what your urine collection looks like so you can have a better discussion with your doctor, and I know where those reference ranges should be despite what the lab says. They give They give generic reference ranges, not so much specific for stone formers, like a lot of the lab results will say 5,000 mg of sodium is okay, and we clearly know for any disease, 5,000 mg of sodium is much too much in a in a in a day for people to have.

So, so those reference ranges are too generous. So even though you said, "Listen, sissy, all my lab results are great," eh, are they? Are they?

And clearly you have some genetics going on here because you both have made stones, and I wonder if anybody else, like Mom or Dad or grandparents or aunts, has made them, too. And some people will say, "Well, my mom never made any," but she may have died, and her cadaver, if you opened if you looked into her kidney, it did have stones, she just never passed.

Many cadavers have kidney stones, they just never pass in the patient's lifetime. So, menopause, let me just sum up, we are not destined to become fluffy, inactive women, okay? So know that.

Don't be telling yourself that old story. Plenty of us are fit who have gone through menopause, and also there is no direct cause and effect with menopause and kidney stones. Don't give up, ladies.

Menopause is not easy. Some of you will go through a harder time than others. If you're feeling particularly bad, of course, of course, talk to your doctor about that so they can help you flush out some of these symptoms you're having.

But that's it, I guess. I think I covered it all.

Yeah. And, obviously, I don't have anything [clears throat] excuse me, anything to contribute to this!

Well, one day when Amara goes through it, you'll have You'll start learning real fast!

Yeah.

I'm sure you will!

But, yeah, that 24-hour urine analysis, though, you mentioned it, it's on the site at kidneystonediet.com. I threw it up on the screen before, I'll pop it up again. But, yeah, it's the 24-hour urine analysis consult, and then Jill will help you understand what it is that your results are saying.

Because, like you said, reference ranges and various things are hard to go on. It's You don't know what you don't know, and Jill knows what you don't know.

Yeah, that service is very valuable. It's a It's a It's a anybody who has had that service, and there's been thousands, will tell you that's a very valuable service, because then you know how to talk to your doctor. And I made that service up when I was going through my cancer stuff, and I would leave those offices and I'd be like, "Oh, my God, I you know, you don't know what you don't know.

And I don't know about cancer 'cause I'm a kidney stone nurse. So, plus I'm really sick, and it's a mess, right?" So I would go into those office visits and I'd leave them, and half the time I was going to New York, too, because I have an oncologist there, and I would go to New York, I'd spend all this money for a 24-hour visit, and I wasn't prepared, you know.

I didn't know what I didn't know, so I didn't know what to ask, and I never wanted stone formers to go through that. So the half-hour with me will help prep you for a really successful doctor's office visit for you, so you don't leave there like I did, now I'm Googling stuff when I get home, and then trying to get a doctor to answer you on the portal can be, to say the least, especially post-COVID, very frustrating.

So that's why I made that service up, and it's been very, very successful. Patients are very And, by successful, I mean patients are very happy and satisfied with it, and they feel prepared. When we are sick, the first thing that we lose is control, our wits, of course.

We just It's very anxiety-producing and frustrating to be sick and depressing. I mean, I've been through all those emotions. And so, especially when you didn't know anything about a kidney stone, and you're hit upside the head with them, or, in this case, your back, at 3:00 a.m., always on vacation, for some reason my patients tell me that.

I don't know why. And, you know, you It's just really scary, and some people have lost ureters, and they've lost kidneys. And believe me, if you heard the stories I heard every day, wow, you'd be giving all this free information out, too, because you really want people to understand that you can prevent these things and to get the right information out.

But to be able to have a good conversation with your doctor so you can get on the best treatment plan for you, and when the doctor sees that you're educated, they really They'll They're going to sit down, they're going to unbutton their tie a little, and they're going to be like, "Oh, shit, she has some good questions. Let me think about what Tamara's saying right now." You know, they're not on autopilot: "This one, this one, this one, this one," because now you're stopping them in their tracks, and you're asking educated questions.

I promise you, it's a wonderful service. I'm very proud of that service. I don't mind saying.

Oh, yeah, and that's the thing. And it's not to make the doctor's the visit to the doctor difficult on him or her, it's merely for you to get the best results. That's all it's about, because, yeah, like if you don't know what to ask, if you don't know what to refer to, they're going to give you, like you said, the boilerplate, the standard recommendation, the standard details that they typically give.

Absolutely. A lot of doctors, my patients will come back and email, they'll say, "My doctor was so impressed everything I knew, and he said, 'I wish all my patients were like you.'" 'Cause you got to remember, I'm not a wealthy woman, folks. That's because most people don't know they should change their diet, and if they do, they don't want to.

So, you know, they're not calling me, those people, right? So it's people that are really motivated to never go through this again. But honestly, folks, it's not the doctor's fault.

Most people just they don't want to change their diet. It's not easy what we're asking you to do, but God bless America, is it worth it.

Absolutely. Well, I think that's a good spot to wrap, and if you have a question out there, the number's 773-789-8763, and we'd love to feature you on a future episode. And the urine analysis, the prevention course, the free email newsletter, the free oxalate list, all of that can be found at kidneystonediet.com, and along with a myriad of other things, which paid and free.

So you never You never have to feel like you have to pay for anything. Like we have all these podcast episodes, I think we're we're rapidly approaching number 150, which is wild to consider, and there's just content, content, content everywhere you go, whatever works for you. And if you get value out of this, hopefully you can share it with someone who needs it, whether it's the podcast, the audio, the video on YouTube, the website, anything you can do to help to spread the message to help other people means the world to both of us, and we really appreciate each and every each and every one of you.

We do, and we're trying to get 10,000 members. So if you could just hit the red button, that would be really helpful, too. Leave a comment, I always like talking with you guys in the comment section.

And, Kim, thanks so much. It's a great question. So great I thought I answered it before, but I guess I didn't.

Yeah, so thanks again, everyone, and we will see you next time.

Thanks, Kim!