How soon should you have calcium after oxalate?

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, fellow student, Jeff Sarris.

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

So, we actually saw each other this past weekend in person. We had a big recording day just a couple days ago, and we completely refreshed the course. So, the Kidney Stone Prevention Course, you can find at kidneystonediet.com, same content, obviously, but just brought up to now, because the course has been out for a little bit, and we wanted to give it a little a little shine, a little polish to—

A little refresh.

Yeah. So, yeah, that was fun. Like, and little Finn was so just so, so good.

Like, he's so well-behaved. And then I'm like sitting there, so Jill, obviously, is on the other side of the camera. I'm on behind the camera.

But I'm sitting there and Finn comes up and he's just the big eyes, just like, "Hey, pet me. You want to play? What do you say?"

He's just such a sweetie. Look at him. I mean, I don't know how I get so lucky with animals.

I swear to God. He's such a beautiful little soul, he's and he's funny, too. Often you'll find us, if you just were eavesdropping in my little apartment, you'd hear us giggling together.

He's very funny. He tells the best jokes, and he cheers me up when I'm sick, so. I mean, when I don't feel well, which is a lot, he cuddles right up.

You know, and I know every dog owner's like, "Yeah, Jill. They know. They really do know." So, yeah, he's just a he's truly such a great companion for me.

I'm so glad, cause you know when you have an animal that dies, as you know, Jeff, you're like, "Oh, God, never again!" Well, here's my never again, you know. What am I supposed to do? I love having animals in my life.

I love it.

Absolutely. Yeah, and he's such a little ball of energy. Like, it's so it's so, like, positive, too.

Like, like, he's he's not like needy. He's like, "Hey, do you want to play?" and he's like, "Okay, no. Okay, I'm good.

I'll just I'll just run around and spin in circles and do this stuff here." I don't know, it was just so much fun. I really liked it. And, obviously, seeing you and getting all that knocked out, because we wanted to update the course for a while.

So, like, anyone who already has purchased the course, they're they could be out already, the updated videos. But depending on when you're listening to this, yeah, all the videos will be refreshed. It'll be structured just a little bit differently for super simple access to exactly the information you need.

But, yeah, you can find that at kidneystonediet.com.

Yes, very exciting. I mean, I'm telling you, I mean, that old course, I said to you this weekend, I'm I looked like an Afghan. I don't even know.

I don't know what, you know, but it was, you know, it needed some refreshing, and so did I, so there you go. So, we're all it's getting exciting.

Yeah, and that's the beauty, too, is all the content, like you've been doing this for 25-plus years, so it's not like anything has changed. Suddenly, you're like, "Oh, no! Let me Let me fix this." Everything was perfect, so we didn't have to re-record it, but yeah, it was just time.

Time to make everything, yeah, give it a little polish. But let's dive right into this week's question.

Okay.

Hi, this is Margie from New York. I'd like to know if you are eating a food high in oxalates, which I virtually never do, I usually stick to the low or medium foods with oxalates, when you drink, let's say, a glass of milk with high-oxalate foods, do you have to drink, let's say, a glass of milk, eight ounces of milk before you're eating the food that has a high oxalate or can you just sip away at the milk as you're eating the food with high oxalates?

How fast must you be consuming the calcium with your high-oxalate foods? Can you even drink, let's say, a glass of milk after, let's say, you're eating something with high oxalates? Should it be at the same time?

I just don't know whether you could do it ahead of time, with it, or after. Does it make a difference? Thank you so much.

Hope to hear you answer my question. Bye-bye.

Margie from New York. Margie from New York, it reminds me of my mom cause she was Margie from New York, or Margaret depending on if she people were mad at her. So, yeah.

Hi, Margie. Happy that you asked the question because, now, you know what's funny? This I find very funny.

So, I will remind people that in 25 years no one has ever said when I ask them, "So, what are you doing for calcium?" "Oh, Jill, I get plenty of calcium. We don't even have to talk about it." There's no person that has gotten or even thought about calcium their entire life. Once past the age of five, nobody was doing anything with milk or anything.

So, it's just interesting to me. So, now when they get a kidney stone, they're like, "Okay, Jill. Do I drink the milk, you know, at 7:15?

Do I drink the milk at 7:14? Should I…" It's so interesting, right? Because now, it's just like when you stub your toe.

You don't think about your toe until something's wrong with it, right? That's what illnesses or disease So, now Margie's like, "Oh, man! When do I do this?

How much?" All excellent questions, and it's very common that people do this. So, say you're going to And Margie said, too, she doesn't eat high-oxalate foods, and this gives me a little inroad to dive into: remember, do not do not restrict yourself too much, please. We take away spinach, almonds, rutabaga for those of you who are eating it in the South all the time, but, you know, even if sweet potatoes, potatoes, they're higher in oxalate, but it doesn't mean you can never have them again.

And, actually, Margie, if you're like, "Yeah, I'd like a sweet potato," that would be a perfect food to have some milk or non-dairy milk, a calcium source to pair with. So, how do you do this? If you're So, I'm going to say what I do, because there's stone formers in my family, and I don't want to add that to my medical list.

So, what I do is this: if I'm having, say I'm having a quarter of a sweet potato or even half a sweet potato, I think there's 28 milligrams of oxalate in half a cup of sweet potatoes, so say I'm going to have that, I have my milk with that food. Margie, if you want to have it right before, if you want to sip it during, or you want to have it after, the point is, you want to have it with the meal, during mealtime.

It doesn't have to be you take a bite, take a sip, take a bite, take a sip. It doesn't have to be like that. But, you can't have your higher-oxalate meal and then two hours later go, "Oh, holy projoly, I forgot my calcium source," and then think you're going to have it at that, you know, it's not going to catch up to that oxalate you've already started to digest, obviously.

So, you just want it with the meal, Margie. That's it. Before, after, during, but within the mealtime.

Now, the excellent even more excellent question you asked was, "How much? Do I need a full cup?" Here's how I do it. If I'm having, say I'm having some Fiber One cereal that is higher in oxalate, look at your Harvard list, I am going to use a whole glass of milk, a whole cup, sorry, cup of milk for that cereal, because it's really higher in oxalate.

If I'm having something that has like less than 10 milligrams of oxalate, I may not want to waste my whole cup of calcium on that food. I may not want to. I may know I'm having some soy later on and I'm going to add my cup of milk to that.

So, if I'm just having a little bit of oxalate, like just say I'm throwing this out, less than 10 milligrams of oxalate, I may just have half a glass of milk, or maybe I may not have any, and I'll pair it with something later. So, I'm kind of thinking about my daily meals, cause I meal plan, so I know what I'm going to eat each day pretty much.

And I have a great Kidney Stone Diet safe meal plan. Check it out at kidneystonediet.com. Has all the oxalate figured out for you.

And so, what I'll do is I'll look at each meal and say, "Ew, I don't think I want to waste my calcium source on this meal, cause there's barely any oxalate in it, but I'm going to push it over to maybe a snack later. I'll have half a cup there, half a cup here, a whole cup there." So, I do it based upon the food I'm eating each time I'm eating.

You may say, "That's all too much for me. I'm having a glass or a cup or a half a cup of my calcium-based product with each meal, so I don't forget." You could do it that way. Some people are going to say, "I'm going to have three cups, one with each meal." But turn it around, Buster Brown, and look how much calcium is in your serving size, especially the fortified plant milk.

Some of them have over 400 milligrams of calcium each time. And if you're a guy or a woman who has not hit menopause yet, you only need 1,000 milligrams of calcium each day, so don't go overboard. So, look at the portion size you're using, look at how much calcium will be in that portion size, and pair it accordingly.

If you have breakfast and there's less than 5 milligrams of oxalate in your breakfast, maybe you don't even want calcium there, but maybe you do. You have to decide. Is Am I being clear, Jeff?

You know, it can get confusing. That's why it's a good question.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because we sort of innately want that perfect system, perfect formula where it's like, okay, this bite, this sip, like but that just isn't that just doesn't exist, so it's it's good, it's a framework of how to think about it.

Yeah, and you're absolutely right. And, also, I'm just going to I giggle to myself a little because, you know, no one's thought about calcium their entire adult life, and now because we've been through this trauma of a kidney stone, we're really focused on it. And we tend to, because with my illness, God knows I've gotten really heady about it, where some days I'm just like, "Jill, rise above, man.

You're getting way too much micro into this and making it harder than it is." So, the overall picture here for all of you is this: get your calcium needs met every day. If you're on vacation and you missed a day of calcium, it's okay. You didn't make a stone because you missed a day of calcium.

You missed three decades of calcium. So, that's when I say rise above and don't get too like making so much pressure on yourself or beating yourself up. We all know I hate that for you.

So, you know, it's okay if you're not perfect every single day. It's the new year. Everyone is very focused on being perfect, and when we are focus on being perfect, that just leads to more anxiety and it also leads to impossible management of diet.

Meaning, nobody here is perfect. You're going to go out once in a while. You're not going to get your calcium needs met.

Yo- Some of you actually bring like a thermos of flax milk when you go out to eat. You don't have to do that. Just you didn't get your calcium with your lunch, it's okay.

So, choose a lower-oxalate meal. So, but I love her question. Have your calcium-containing product, whether it's non-dairy or dairy milk, orange juice, whatever you're doing, and just have it in that meal frame, but it doesn't have to be exactly each bite you're taking a sip of calcium.

It will all work in that meal, and you don't have to waste a whole cup of milk each time you're drinking each time you're eating something, cause it may not even be a high-oxalate meal. The point is you get up to your goal, whether it's 1,000 for men and premenopausal women, and postmenopausal women get up to 1,200. And don't go over.

And do not take more than 500 milligrams at a time, okay? So, don't Some men will say, "Jill, I'm just going to drink three cups of milk in the morning." Don't do that. Your body can't absorb it all, and that excess calcium winds up in your urine, and that increases your stone risk.

So, excellent quest- question, Margie from New York. Love it, love it.

Yeah, that was perfect. And if you're out there with a question, the number is 773-789-8763, because we'd love to feature all of your voices, as many people as we can. This is so helpful to have people call in because we can hit things from different angles we might not think about, and you have the questions.

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Absolutely. See you next time.

Thank you, Margie.