00:00:00 Jill Harris
What can kidney stone patients eat? Is this good? Is that bad?
Is everything bad? Is there nothing to eat? These are the questions that you have asked me since 1998.
First, you're going to be making stones in the future if you continue eating these foods. Now, here's the highest oxalate foods that I actually take away, and I have my list because I'm going to forget. Spinach, it's over 500 milligrams of oxalate for a cup.
Rhubarb, many people aren't sucking down rhubarb every day, but if you are, you got to stop. Buckwheat groats, what the hell are those, Jill? You're going to find that in ingredient lists, so look for it and don't eat those foods.
You'll find that, somehow, in breads and cereals, so pay attention to those ingredient lists. Wheatberries, another one that's super high, one cup is almost 100 milligrams of oxalate, so stay away from them. Almonds, we take away.
I'm known for portion, not perfection. A lot of these foods you can continue eating, you just can't eat as much as you want of them, and you have to get your calcium needs met every day. At Kidney Stone Diet, we have an entire food list that you can have.
Next up: chocolate, spinach, almonds, are they good for you? Not really. Here's why.
The problem is foods get labeled super, and what you do with that word is eat lots of it. Dark chocolate, eating it every night, it's an antioxidant, so you think you're just detoxifying your body. Meanwhile, you're eating something that's really high in oxalate.
Spinach and almonds, these products are overeaten, and that's one of the reasons you form kidney stones. And oxalate is a problem for a lot of kidney stone formers because when too much builds up in your body, it can form a kidney stone, and that is not super. You're actually allowed 100 milligrams of oxalate a day, and most of you are taking away way too many foods, and you don't have to do that, but you do have to give up the amount of high-oxalate foods you're eating every day.
A lot of you are depriving yourselves from healthy foods, and that is not why you're making kidney stones. Calcium oxalate stones are up to 80% of all the stone formers, but oxalate may not even be a problem. So, in order to know if oxalate is even the problem, you need to do a 24-hour urine collection.
So, at this point, you're like, "Okay, what can I actually eat?" You're at the grocery store, you got your cart, you go to the produce section, and you go right by it because you're like, "Well, I can't eat that stuff anymore because it's all high in oxalate." Stop! Stop the cart! You do not have to bypass the produce section.
As a matter of fact, I want you to sit there, and I want you to know that you can have most foods that are there. You can't have spinach, but you can have kale. All of the foods in the produce section are what I want you to be eating.
You can have a little bit of meat, too, of course, and you can have carbs, and you can have fiber, and you can have avocados. Basically, I take away like five foods in order to prevent kidney stones. Most of my job is bringing foods back to your dinner table.
What I'm trying to do is show you that any lifestyle can fit into the Kidney Stone Diet. The Kidney Stone Diet isn't about taking what you're doing and throwing it out. The Kidney Stone Diet is to complement your way of life, and that's what is the most misunderstood thing.
And that's why the Kidney Stone Diet is a set of goals. It's much different than anything you've ever seen before. And finally, it may be counterintuitive, but you may need more calcium to prevent calcium oxalate stones.
A lot of you are going to think that, "Oh, my god, I'm making a calcium-based stone. I better stop having calcium." Well, let's just put it this way: in 30 years, I've never even had a patient that said, "Jill, I'm getting so much calcium, you don't have to tell me to get more." Not one! We don't think about calcium until we have bone disease or we get a kidney stone.
You need calcium in your diet, number one, because you do have bones, you need to feed them so you're nice and strong and you don't get bone disease. But in kidney stone world, you need calcium because it helps lower oxalate. Oxalate and calcium will bind in your small intestine, therefore oxalate can't be sapped back up into the blood, and both of those things go out through your colon into the stool, and that's how you get rid of oxalate.
But if you eat a higher-oxalate food and you do not pair it with calcium, then that oxalate will get sapped back up into the bloodstream, and you will get more oxalate in your body. So, you need your calcium needs met, which is 1,000 milligrams of calcium for men and women. If you are postmenopausal, 1,200 milligrams.
All the information is part of the Kidney Stone Diet. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next week.
