Sherry has a renal leak that causes her to absorb too much calcium, leading to hypercalciuria. She wants to know if the Kidney Stone Diet® will help her. The Kidney Stone Diet® focuses on getting enough calcium, avoiding excessive salt and sugar, and not overdoing meat protein. While a Mediterranean diet is generally recommended, Sherry should be cautious about consuming foods high in oxalate, such as spinach, due to her renal leak. The diet can help lower her risk of kidney stones, but she should consult with her doctor and consider getting a DEXA scan to assess her bone health.
Takeaways
- The Kidney Stone Diet can be beneficial for individuals with hypercalciuria, but caution should be exercised for those with a renal leak.
- Following a Mediterranean diet is generally recommended, but foods high in oxalate, like spinach, should be avoided for individuals with a renal leak.
- The diet focuses on getting enough calcium, avoiding excessive salt and sugar, and not overdoing meat protein.
- Consult with a doctor and consider getting a DEXA scan to assess bone health.
Jeff Sarris
Who should not follow the Kidney Stone Diet®? Let’s talk about that. Today we have a question from Sherry and what do you say Jill, do you wanna dive right into Sherry’s question?
Jill Harris
Every time I hear that name, I’m like, Sherry baby, Sherry baby. Yeah, let’s dive right in.
Jeff Sarris
I like it. We’re not playing our intro music. So there we go. We got music going anyway, changing it up a bit. But here we go. Question from Sherry.
Jill Harris
So Sherry has a renal leak that means one of her renal tubules in the kidney is 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 hypercalceria 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 and everything else we get from salt. Water retention, weight gain. Why weight gain? Because 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 Mediterranean diet because they know it’s a healthier diet. So they generically will tell you that. The Mediterranean diet also will talk about, you’ll definitely be eating spinach. Sherry said, well, my doctor said I don’t have to worry about oxalate because 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 former, 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 hypercalceria is, hyper, too much, cal, calcium, urea, and 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, 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 that.
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 eat a vitamin. You can Google vitamins and honestly, we just pee them out. That’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 starting that thiazide diuretic to make sure your potassium doesn’t go too low. What else did she ask? 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 the 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 hypercalceria, 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, don’t worry about oxalate. Your oxalate isn’t high in the urine collection. But did the doctor ask you, did you how do 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, 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, 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.
You know, it’s one thing to change your diet, that’s hard enough, but then too, when you have something because of something else, 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 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 that.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, she also mentioned apple cider vinegar as a supplement.
Jill Harris
I still don’t really understand why people want to do ACV, but I don’t have a problem with it. I’d be very careful with it. A lot of my patients tried to break up stones that way, and then they got a lot of inflammation in their esophagus. So just be very careful. It brought on GERD for them. It affects everybody a little bit different. So I’m never going to suggest people do ACV. I know she knows I’m not going to suggest that.
I’m not a fan of things like that. That’s me personally. I don’t see any medical benefit for that. But as grown people, we all make our own decisions for sure.
Jeff Sarris
Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks again for that question. That was a great one. The number is 773 -773 -789 -8763 if you want to have your question featured on a future episode and yeah, head on over to kidneystonediet .com for a deep dive into everything kidney stone diet related, tons of free resources, some premium resources like the course, the meal plans, and a free weekly newsletter. Highly recommend jumping on that email list. Absolutely free, but Jill will keep you on track every very single week through that email.
So I think with that, we will wrap. Thanks again for tuning in, for liking, subscribing, and sharing with people who need this information, and we’ll see you next time.
Jill Harris
So Jeff, we made 10 ,000 subscribers!
Yeah, I mean, 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 % of, 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, 90% of YouTube channels never make 10 ,000. I didn’t know that. So it’s a big deal and I’m gonna 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. I’m not caring about the popularity, neither is Jeff.
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 asked for that. And now onward to a hundred thousand because that’s our next goal. But I just wanted to thank everybody. Everybody was so kind. And then when we made the ten thousand, it was like nine, nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine. So I got my camera out and I started videotaping and waited until the ten thousand mark and I put it on the Facebook group because 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.
Jill Harris
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.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, and that is the goal, just to reach as many people as possible with the valid information. So that’s why I see we’re changing things up too. I’m doing a little intro now. We pulled out the music for these few episodes, but each time we’re going to experiment and see sort of how things do, how we can reach more people through this channel. So every little bit you do helps.
Jill Harris
Yeah, and tell us what you like. You may say, why’d you take the music away? We don’t like it. Or, you know, it’s great without the music, but we welcome all kinds of criticism, critiques, comments. Do you like what you don’t like? It’s the channels for you. It’s not for us. I mean, it’s for you. So let us know how we’re doing so we can improve. We’re just learning how to do all this too, you know. Yes, it is.
Jeff Sarris
Yeah, it’s all experimentation. So yeah, thanks again to everyone tuning in and we’ll see you next time.
Jill Harris
Bye everybody.
Leave a Reply