Fact or Fiction: Drinking olive oil will help pass a kidney stone

Okay, so this week we're hitting on a kidney stone myth that drinking olive oil will help pass a kidney stone.

The following is designed to entertain and inform, not provide medical advice. Always consult your doctor before starting any 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 Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse, and I am so razzed to be here today. I can't even To If my son just heard me say razzed, he'd be like, "What the hell does that mean?" I don't know, I just made it up! I'm razzed, though.

I'm pumped, man. Pumped to be here.

I like it. Well, yeah, I mean, especially with these myths. This is going to be a good collection of things to really touch on and help people, so no one is misinformed from things that may seem intuitive or maybe they're just shared far too much online as like a catch-all, as a placebo, as a magic pill, say.

Yeah, you know, too, it's so funny, Jeff. They These kinds of videos always warrant the most comments, and I will tell you this, I'm We don't do that for the comments because I like nice comments. I like a supportive community.

I do not like unkind comments, but these kinds of videos can draw unkind comments, which I hate! But these things have to be addressed, and the unkind things, people get mad because they're like, "Oh, yes, this worked for me." Okay. Did it, or were there other circumstances that were in play?

Was it a coincidence, right? So, you know, there's always this these kinds of things. We need to address them, but it's always a little dicey in the comment section.

So, whatever, though. I'm Look, I don't I don't shy away from the hard stuff. I couldn't be doing this 25 years if that were the case.

So, bring it! Let's go!

Yeah. Well, and you have the first-hand experience working with thousands of patients, which is a number that, like, to just say it, it doesn't feel it's just like, "Oh, thousands, whatever." But when you think about it, I mean, that is a lot of patients. Maybe at some point, we'll actually figure out how many people you work with in any given year, because it is no small number, no small feat.

And you have all the data to prove it to prove that these aren't things that work.

Yeah, I think, you know, another thing, you know, people have asked me like, "Oh, wow! This is a long time to be doing something." But, you know, it's interesting to me because if you're a banker, you've been doing it for 40 years, you retire. I mean, I don't know.

But, you know, talking about kidney stones, Jill, you could do anything as a nurse. There's so much to talk about, and it wasn't too long ago that I was the only one talking about this stuff, right? Now, there's other people, which is great, because other people can reach more.

Not everybody likes my style, okay? So, it's great that there are other people doing their thing in the kidney stone world, but there have been a lot of myths as far as what prevents kidney stones. And, you know, nobody wants to hear of, "Here's some goals to lessen your stone risk." We call it the Kidney Stone Diet, which it's not a diet, really, it's a set of goals to adhere to lower your stone risk.

But boy, if people can people, especially in our culture today where, you know, you need some Vaseline for your lips or you need some eye shadow, you can get it within a 2-hour window, okay? So, we do not like to wait for anything. And so, we want a quick fix.

We want to remedy any of the discomfort we have in our life, whether it's we're hungry and we want Uber Eats to be delivered to us, or we want to take a pill to get rid of, or at least cover up, our medical condition. There's no easy fix here. And people don't want to hear that.

I cannot tell you how many people, when I was going through my cancer, sent me all kinds of things like, "Try this tea, do this, my aunt did this, she's still here alive today." It's like, you know, there's other reasons why people beat cancer, if you want to use that phrase. I mean, sometimes it's just luck and it's this horseshoe in my wrist, that's why I think I'm here.

I don't know. But I and you know, there's just And I know that people hate it when I say, "Look, I know about that special thing. There's no science." And people are like, "Well, it's not always science." And actually, I agree.

Sometimes, you know, and science also changes. I get that. But if it was really as easy as drinking a tea or whatever you're putting in your mouth, nobody would have stones, and there's millions of people with kidney stones.

So, I just We just there wouldn't be this issue anymore. So, it The diet helps. It will definitely lower your stone risk.

Up to 80% of kidney stone recurrence can just be eradicated with just the diet, and sometimes medications, too. But we start with diet first, because a lot of those medications won't even work unless you change your diet. So, I always kind of get my way with dietary changes.

And the Kidney Stone Diet goals are such that it will help diabetes, it will help hy- hypertension, cardiovascular disease, 'cause we're asking you to lower added sugar and lower your sodium, and you'll also lose weight. It's a nice side effect. But also, what we don't really care about that, meaning once you pin a really important "why" to a dietary change, you stick with it, 'cause you don't want to be sick again.

And kidney stones are a really important why. So, all right, what's the myth? Does olive oil…

Yeah, why maybe would that Why maybe would that be a popular one that olive oil, drinking olive oil, could help pass a stone?

Well, people think, what people think is, if you drink olive oil First of all, I would have to wear a diaper. I mean, that's just I don't even know what to tell you. But I've had patients say, "Jill, I tried.

I drank like three cups of olive oil every hour." I mean, can you imagine? I've had a patient say that to me. "And all's I did was run to the toilet.

And no, no stone came out, either. I still had to have a ureteroscopy." The thing is people have said, people, just Tom, Dick, and Harry, not a doctor, not science, has just said that if you drink olive oil, it will coat the stone and it will just slide right out. Slide right out!

Slide right out! Absolutely no science to show that. I've never in 25 years met a patient that drinks olive oil and it slid right out.

It Now, somebody may write in the comments, "Well, Jill, I drank olive oil and it slid right out." And I'm going to say this, "Were you also drinking copious amounts of water? Did the stone just decide to come out?" You know how many people weren't doing anything, but just living their life, never had stones before, and a stone just came out?

Because the stone got loose and came out. So, I always push back on those. It's fine.

If that's what you want to believe, God bless. Believe that, that's fine. In my experience of 25 years dealing with thousands and thousands of people, some who have drunk olive oil, it did not help them.

It's to me cockamamy stuff. It just doesn't make sense, and it's not going to push a stone out. It's not going to help a stone out.

It's not go- going to coat the stone so it's slippery and slide out. That just doesn't happen. Lots of stones just come out.

That's it. It just does. So, that's the end of the story.

I mean, this is a short and sweet one, but it's that Please, folks, do not drink cups of olive oil. You'd be surprised of the things I've heard. That's not going to help a stone out.

What will help a stone out is drinking fluids to help flush it out, but also, they also have a mind of their own. They're going to come out, or they're going to get stuck in the ureter and you're going to need a surgery, or they're going to get you it's just no. You know.

You So, what can help it out if it's already on its way out, you moving, although, you know, you may be in pain, you may not want to move, drinking a lot of fluids, that can help it come out. There are some medications you can talk to your doctor about, like Flomax, that can help relax the ureter so it can help push the stone out.

That can Talk to your doctor about some meds that can help you if you know you're passing a stone and you don't have like infection symptoms like fever or chills or anything like that. You can ask your doctor, "Can I Is there a medication to help me pass this?" But olive oil is not going to do it, folks, so don't waste your time with that.

The end.

Yeah, and the thing that makes sense, too, because if you think about it, we're it's coming out in our urine, the kidney stone, where olive oil is again like a food, it's a fat. It's something that we're more digesting and it's going out the other end.

That's right.

So to think that it's going to coat is

That's right.

It's a beautiful like sort of image that, "I can consume this and everything will be better. I'll be able to just pass this." But sadly it's just those are they're different systems. There's a lot of a lot of things at play, but it's just not on target as to what happens.

Yeah, and I think, like I said, it makes sense because people are like, "But my stone did pass and I did take olive oil." I hear you, but those are two separate things. I mean, the stone could've just been on its way out, you were drinking lots of water as well, or maybe you weren't. Like I said, there's people that are walking around, they ain't drinking no water, they're definitely not doing anything to prevent kidney stones 'cause they don't even know they have them, and they pass a stone.

Right? So, that stone just decided to move. It was small enough to leave the kidney, go into the ureter, and for you to pass it in your urine.

But, you know, stones typically are going to do what they're going to do, if that makes sense.

Yeah, definitely. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good myth to hit on, and we will continue hitting on all these myths because there are so many of them.

So many.

But if you're out there with a question that you want answered, the number is 773-789-8763, and we would love to feature your voice on a future episode. We still have other questions, as well, that will be coming. We're going to be doing a mixture of listener questions and myths for a little bit, just because we want to make sure we touch on some of these things directly, and I think they're exceedingly valuable to everyone.

So, if you want to dive deeper, you can head over to kidneystonediet.com where you can find the Kidney Stone Prevention Course, you can find the Kidney Stone Diet meal plans, you can find the free weekly newsletter, you can find the Kidney Stone Prevention group on Facebook, which is a huge group, extremely valuable with a bunch of support for one another.

People who are there experiencing similar things, much like the group calls with Jill, but this is a more of a community-focused area, but yeah, there's so many resources and you can find everything at kidneystonediet.com.

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Yeah, thank you all and we'll see you next week.

Bye, everybody.