Yeah. Every time I hear that name, I'm like, "Sherry baby." Hi Jill and Jeff. This is Sherry Lefton.
I'm from Florida. I have a question. You often talk about having a medical condition maybe being an exception to the kidney stone diet.
I recently found out that I have a renal leak. I have nine stones on one side, six on another. I have been given now, hydrochlorothiazide and potassium citrate to handle the renal leak situation, plus I've been instructed to take, to drink, at least 2 L of water, and a banana a day since my potassium– magnesium was low.
My question is, do you still recommend the need to follow a kidney stone diet when somebody has a medical condition that's causing their stones? I was told I'm hypercalciuric versus hyper– versus having hyperoxaluria, and my doctor said, "Just doing a regular Mediterranean diet, it's fine, since I don't need to watch my oxalates." Period.
Basically, I want to know if you agree with that assessment. Also, if you are also handling my questions, I was curious if you think that people in my condition would be able to take apple cider vinegar supplements or a multivitamin that has vitamins C and D. I really appreciate everything that you guys are doing.
Without you, I would not have done or knew to do the 24-hour urine collection. I did have to argue with my old urologist, and because of that, I went to the new urologist, and he's wonderful. So, excuse me, I'll be doing my second, 24-hour urine collection shortly, to see if the medications are helping me and my, concentration on really drinking water and, Crystal Light.
So, basically, if you could address the questions dealing with people with a medical condition, I would really appreciate it. Like I mentioned, it's a renal leak, and I have hypercalciuria.
All right. So, Sherry has a renal leak. That means one of her renal tubules in the kidney is– it's it's not working properly.
She's absorbing too much calcium. Okay? And, again, she said it.
She would never have known unless she did a urine collection. So, you don't know, so what she has is hypercalciuria related to or due to a renal leak. So, her kidney isn't filtering the calcium properly, okay?
It prevents calcium from being reabsorbed the way it should be, and then you wind up with this too much calcium in the urine. So, she's saying, "Is this diet going to help me? Or is it going to hurt me?" So, let's think about what the diet is.
It's getting enough calcium. It's making sure you don't eat too much salt because of hypertension, everything else we get from salt, water retention, weight gain. Why weight gain?
'Cause a lot of unhealthy foods have a lot of salt. Paying attention to sugar, getting enough calcium, and not overdoing meat protein, and, of course, getting enough fluids. So, let's think about it this way.
It's certainly not going to hurt you. A Mediterranean diet is great. Sure.
Every doctor is going to say do the Medit- Mediterranean diet 'cause they know it's a healthier diet. So, they generically will tell you that. The Mediterranean diet also will talk- you'll be definitely be eating spinach.
Sherry said, "Well, my doctor said I don't have to worry about oxalate 'cause that's not why I'm getting kidney stones." As a nurse, I always say this: listen to what your doctor's saying. I do not override any doctor's order. Legally, I do not.
I'm just here to educate you. Jeff is just here to educate you. That's what we're here for, for information.
But as a kidney stone form- and I don't form stones, but it's in my family. I have bowel issues. I have not made stones yet.
I hope I don't. Just because my oxalate's not a problem, I have malabsorption issues. My oxalate's not a problem, but I'm not eating spinach anytime soon, I'll tell you that.
So, if you have too much calcium in your urine, that's what hypercalciuria is. Hyper, too much, cal, calcium, uria, in the urine. Why would you want to really dig into some spinach on a daily basis?
Not that you would, but why do you also then want to increase your oxalate levels? Because maybe the stone didn't make– maybe the stone's happening because of this renal leak. But why are you going to add more of a risk if you're going to eat more oxalate?
Does that make sense? I mean, if you eat a lot of oxalate, you're going to– you have a renal leak. So, it's not helping.
I would say it is going to lower your risk if you do follow the Kidney Stone Diet, especially because you have a renal leak. So, yes, the diet will be very helpful, absolutely. So, you could do the– look, the Kidney Stone Diet is a set of goals.
Whatever lifestyle you want to do, just fit into those goals. So, you could do Mediterranean diet, sure. Not a problem.
I wouldn't be eating spinach with a renal leak, absolutely not. I also wouldn't be taking vitamin C because if you are doing something like the Mediterranean diet, you're going to get plenty of vitamin C in your fruits and vegetables. So, I don't, you know, I wouldn't– I really wouldn't want a vitamin.
If you're eating well, you shouldn't need a vitamin. You can Google vitamins, and, honestly, we just pee them out. It's what we're doing, and nobody's regulating vitamins.
Now, do I take some vitamins? Yes, I have to. Vitamin D and B12, I have to take them.
I have malabsorption issues. Those things always run low, so I have to. So, there's that.
As far as the hydrochlorothiazide, yes, you should be getting a blood test, too. I assume the doctor ordered that because that's a, that's a, that diuretic can make you lose excess potassium. So, you want to make sure you get a blood test within a week upon start- starting that thiazide diuretic to make sure your potassium doesn't go too low.
What else did she ask? Oh, the oxalate. So, I mean, primarily what you're asking, "Is the kidney stone– is it still something I should do?" I think it's something everybody should do.
Why? Because it's lowering your salt, not eating too much added sugar and salt, getting enough fluids, getting enough calcium, and not overdoing the oxalate part. But for somebody who has high urine calcium based upon a medical condition, I also would not be increasing my oxalate because then you do have more of a chance to make a calcium oxalate stone.
So, it's two separate things. You have a medical condition that is increasing your kidney stone risk. You don't want to all of a sudden be doing spinach because if the– let me put it this way.
If your medical condition is being taken care of, and when you do the urine collection, you will see, is the dose of the hydrochlorothiazide fine? Is the potassium citrate dose fine? You're going to see how everything is.
I still wouldn't add– I would still take away spinach and almond products. I just would. And the Mediterranean diet will talk about almonds, for sure.
So, I would still ditch them, especially for somebody, whether it's based upon a medical condition or you just have hypercalciuria not based on a medical condition, it doesn't matter. As a stone former, you should still be lowering oxalate. Now, a lot of doctors will say, "Oh, don't worry about oxalate.
Your oxalate isn't high in the urine collection." But did the doctor ask you, did you– how'd you eat on this collection? Most people, by the time they do a urine collection, they gave up spinach and almond products. They gave it up because if one thing is consistent on the internet, spinach is high in oxalate.
So, nobody does that. As opposed to before they made the stone, they were eating spinach every single day. So, a lot of people change their– so, when the doctor says, "Your oxalate's fine," a lot of times, the doctor didn't ask, "How'd you– did you eat spinach on the collection?" And they didn't ask, "Did you use to eat spinach before the collection?" So, they're not getting a real, total look on things.
They just see the value, it's low, and think everything's cool. But they didn't ask you– I'm not saying all, but a lot of them won't ask you what your past food diary was like. So, I'm just saying that as somebody who has a risk of kidney stones based upon genetic, genetics, I'm not eating any spinach, and I wouldn't ask you to either.
So, I would still pay attention to the oxalate. But as you know, I don't freak out about oxalate here. Get rid of the almond products, chia seeds that are really high in oxalate, spinach, of course.
Go about your business. Hopefully, the medications will work for you and that can help your renal leak. I'm sorry that you have that, you know.
It's always hard when, you know, it's one thing to change your diet, that's hard enough, but then, two, when you have something because of something else, it's it's a lot. And, also, you don't want to risk for stone disease, so I don't know you, but, Sherry, I would definitely make sure you get a DEXA scan to check on your bone health, since you have been diagnosed with this renal leak.
You want a baseline look on your bones and get a handle on that, as well. So, my final answer on this is, I would still very much pay attention to the Kidney Stone Diet. It's just a healthy diet.
If you have a renal leak, I absolutely would not be doing the overdoing the oxalate part of this. And salt and sugar and all those other things help lower urine calcium by itself. Yes, you have this thing going on, but why add to it?
So, I'm always going to advocate this way of eating, meaning the goals of the Kidney Stone Diet, because they're just healthy for everybody, absolutely. That's my take. I think I got to all her things.
I know she asked a lot of things, but I think–
I forgot about– yeah, I mean, oh, my god, did I bug my Facebook group and newsletter people for that! But, yes, you know, because even though people watch your videos every week, 30%– there's 70% of people never hit the subscribe button. So, it's very difficult to get people to actually click that button.
And when you make 10,000 subscribers, I mean, it– only– only 90%, 90%– get rid of the word "only"– 90% of YouTube channels never make 10,000. I didn't know that. So, it's a big deal and I'm going to tell you right now, Jeff and I are thrilled about it.
Hopefully, we'll get up in the search quicker. You know, when you Google "kidney stones," there's a lot of junk that comes up way before us. So, that's why we care about subscribers.
We don't– we're I'm not caring about the popularity, neither is Jeff, but YouTube takes our channel a little bit more seriously and will show it to more people if we have a lot of subscribers. So, that's why we ask for that. And now onward to a 100,000, 'cause that's our next goal!
But I just wanted to thank everybody. Everybody was so kind and then when we made the 10,000, it was like 9,999, so I got my camera out and I started videotaping and waited until the 10,000 mark and I put it on the Facebook group because I couldn't– you know, I couldn't have done it, Jeff couldn't have– we can't do this without you guys.
So, when you subscribe, when you like the video– you don't have to like it, but if you do like it, if you click the little thumbs up button, again, YouTube says, "Hey, they're doing something right over there. People care about this channel," and then we're shown more. So, that's why we ask for these things, not because we want to feel adorable and cute.
So, so, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for helping us make the 10,000. We could never do it without you. So, thank you, thank you.
