It is important to note that everyone’s dietary needs are different, and the best way to prevent kidney stones is to talk with somebody who knows the nutritional values of foods that ideally link to your profile, your body, your lifestyle, and the way you consume through the ears, the nose, the eyes, the skin and yes, the mouth. Without having a clear picture of your bloodwork, lifestyle, and food habits, nobody – not even a highly respected doctor – should make a nutritional suggestion to help. Unfortunately, your kidney is like a personalized fingerprint. We are all super different and need individual care to prevent or overcome kidney problems.
I have been approached by clients who tell me that they take traditional Chinese medicines in pill forms, highly praised Amazone products, and buy crap in health stores recommended to them via their best friends’ success stories. My regular followers know how much I’m irked by influencers and social media podcasters promoting stuff without actually understanding its benefits. Are you seriously going to buy Rush Limbo’s vitamins or trust Doctor Ozz to give you TV advice on regaining healthy kidney functions after reading about their importance above…?
There’s one called Chanca Piedra, promoted as a “stone breaker” and sold in hundreds of variations and combinations. It’s a formula claimed to be effective in treating kidney stones disease. True to TCM herbal documents, it is indeed a plant that helps reduce uric acid and preserves PH levels, which is ideal for renal health. It helps dissolve stones, reduces the pain, and possibly helps with passage if they are small. Please be aware that with all the current rDNA fingerprinting of herbal claims, we have insufficient evidence to support it scientifically.
For an honest practitioner, if we don’t know where it’s grown, under what circumstances it is grown, how it was harvested, and then how it was manipulated or chemically altered into the end product, like a pill, we have no understanding of whether this remedy actually contains a valuable benefit or is safe to consume for all. Before taking a remedy, should you first understand why you form calcium stones?
Another product is Tribulus Terrestris extract. This herbal plant, a prickly thorned scrub crawling around the edges of forests, has long been used in Chinese medicine. Again, the same caution above applies here as well. Know your sources. The extract of this plant has been well documented as being medicinally safe to consume to prevent oxalate and calcium kidney stone formation. It seems to help a broad spectrum of clients by significantly decreasing uric acid levels in urolithic patients.
Let me dispel some of the food myths that are circulating on the big web. First, drinking milk does not cause kidney stones. I am not promoting milk drinking at all, but it is not the problem.
When consuming milk after age 10, you lack two enzymes called renin and lactase to digest milk products. Hence, you either tolerate it (15% of humans can) or you don’t tolerate it. However, from a beneficial perspective, consuming milk as a food source for a human being is not ideal. Yep, it’s a multibillion-dollar industry; I’m in trouble saying this.
Consuming more than 500 milligrams of vitamin C per day is stupid. Just let me be very plain and crude about this. Do not take vitamin C supplements if you can take vitamin C from natural sources, such as fruits, veggies, berries, or fresh greens. Supplementing vitamin C is only good if you’re a pirate on a ship in the 16th century and suffer from scurvy.
Taking (1000mu) thousand units of vitamin C daily is a guarantee for oxalate kidney stones. Stop it immediately. Limit your canned foods, fast foods, and salted condiments in your diet. If you are susceptible to kidney stones, stop eating junk food. Really, seriously, stop.
Lastly, foods that can cause oxalate kidney stones are most likely greens you cannot digest. Do not eat kale unless you intend to chew at least 40 times on kale salad. Kale does not belong in the human body. Just so you know, a cow would not graze this leaf, and they have four stomachs to digest appropriately. It is very strenuous on your digest system.
If you suffer from calcium stones, peel your potatoes, but consume your kiwi with the skin. I’ll explain it later. Beets, especially beet greens, carrot greens, and daily celery juice, are another guarantee for health consequences. Besides extracting the fiber needed to absorb the minerals correctly, gulping this stuff makes your skin sun sensitive. Besides damage to your nervous system, your kidneys will have to work overtime to filter out the excess nutrients you think are so healthy. I have squeezed a deadly amount of this nonsense through juicers as a private chef, serving it up with a smile. There is your kidney stone right here. Enjoy!
Stevia sweetener causes oxalate kidney stones. So, stop that nonsense. Freeze-dried Miso soup (any Ramen lazed with MSG) is another kidney poison.
Let’s look at the variations of kidney stones that can happen in your system. Calcium stones are the most common of kidney stones, a combination of calcium that is oxalate mixed with phosphate and carbonate. Celery juice, again!
Men between 20 and 35 are most likely to develop this stone. Some will live twenty years before these painful crystals break loose and cause problems.
Struvite stones are commonly found in women with urinary tract infections and can block the kidney or the ureter and even clog the bladder. They are very painful and challenging to remove. Consuming a bunch of parsley once a week will likely prevent UTIs and stone formation. Drink peppermint and chamomile tea regularly. Add cherries, blueberries, cranberries, and tomatoes (with the skin) to your diet. Make squash soup once a month and puree it with the seeds—you will unlikely suffer from a urinary infection. I’ll circle back to struvite stones…
You find uric acid stones more common in men than women. Uric acid stones can develop in people with a history of gout or people who undergo chemotherapy, and I need to explain that better. Cancer treatment often triggers an increased rate of cell turnover that leads to urate nephropathy. Some Chemotherapy drugs, such as cisplatin, methotrexate, and streptozocin, damage the kidney cells. One of the foremost causes is using THC (smoking a joint) to offset the effects of the chemo – I once wrote a blog on the liver enzyme Cytochrome P450, and why it is a wrong choice to get medicinally high during cancer treatment.
Cystine stones These stones can develop in people with cystinuria, a condition that causes stones to be made in an amino acid called cysteine during supersaturation of the kidney. Cystinuria is inherently rare. However, certain foods may increase the risk of developing cysteine stones. If you have a history of this kind of stone in your family, reduce rare meats, especially cured or preserved animal products. Careful with shellfish, raw eggs, and dairy products, soybeans, soy-based products. Soy is, unfortunately, added to about 40% of all processed foods sold in the United States. Watch overeating garlic, onions, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and foods high in sodium, like canned foods. Stop eating salami, hot dogs, and canned meats. I mean completely and utterly; Stop eating this crap. It does not belong to the human body.
Foods that are low in alkalinity will help prevent kidney problems. These include grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, which are good at breaking down the alkaline imbalances of fruits, veggies, legumes, and fruits rich in citrate, like lemons, lime juice, oranges, and grapefruits. Yes, snack on them in combination.
If cystine stones are your genetic reality, you should prepare yourself to adjust your diet. Be strict at home and enjoy freely when eating out with friends.
Lastly, whatever celebrity promotes the nonsense of consuming bone broth as a regular health trend is guilty of misleading a naïve consumer. You should only ingest bone broth or consume high amounts of consommés when you are ill, or you have a life-changing goal to adjust to.
It is not ideal for souping down hyper-nutritious broth, as this will trigger your body to produce uric acid stones, which are directly associated with a high purine diet. The same reaction is caused when eating too much liver, interior organs, processed seafood like anchovies, sardines, and muscles, and “smoked” herring, mackerels, and trout (sorry, smoked is often a chemically induced food method that has nothing to do with fire).
Certain vegetables, like overeating asparagus, spinach, and canned mushrooms, can also cause kidney stress. There is also beer and whiskey, foods high in sodium, table sugar, soda, refined carbohydrates, red meats, poultry, and seafood. Again, in a healthy, harmonic body, there is hardly a moment when your kidney would be affected by going “above” regular limits once a while.
On the other hand, what reduces the risks of uric acid stone buildup? Well-aged dairy products, kimchi, and other fermentations are super healthy. Cheese and most fruits (organic or not) are incredibly beneficial, as are vegetables that are high in fiber, but you have to eat the fiber. Veggie juice does not cut it!
Low-purine foods like eggs, nuts, and seeds, pumpkin, apple, and tree nuts are all wonderful. Dates, figs, wolfberries (Goji), sesame, fennel, and poppy seeds are healthy choices. Linseed, chia seeds, and Basil seeds should be soaked before blending or consuming. I recommend egg whites when your digestive tract is sensitive. For a digestive “break-day,” concentrate on any pumpkin, baked, cooked, pureed, or blended, and eat berries and melon with cultured yogurts.
Lastly, let me talk more about struvite stones that are often associated with UTIs and caused by certain bacteria that produce waste, such as ammonia. This kind of kidney stone is often caused by stress and effects 12% of the population. Struvite stones are one of the most common causes of staghorn calculi, which are known to potentially form rapidly in the presence of magnesium, ammonium, and phosphate. They can grow in four weeks to a size that will not pass through the urethra, and surgical procedures are needed to break down or remove larger stones. A ureteroscopy uses a slight scope to remove the stone. Shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) uses high-energy acoustic pulses to break up the stone into smaller pieces for passing.
These bacteria in the upper UI produce an enzyme called urease. This bio slime breaks down urea in the urine and increases the pH level, forming struvite stones with the chemical formula of MG NH4PO46H2O. (Read my blog on antibiotic-resistant slime.)
I am aware this sounds complicated, but let’s elaborate more. Stones can cause symptoms like severe pain in the side of the back, nausea, vomiting, frequent urination, and burning during urination. The treatment typically involves an antibiotic to address the underlying infection and medications to manage symptoms to prevent a resurfaced recurrence.
These antibiotics don’t always work. As soon as the bacteria, a living organism or bug, starts growing, it builds antibiotic-resistant slime. It’s a double whammy. To prevent struvite stones, staying hydrated, maintaining good urinary tract health, and seeking prompt treatments for UTI is essential. It is important to seek medical attention, and here, I circle back to the foods.
Most of our health issues can be directly linked to our consumed foods. This is not an inherited genealogy where we walk around susceptible to developing struvite stones. If you are diagnosed with struvite stones and you have urinary tract infections, start eating a strict diet to counter urinary tract infections and keep yourself mentally healthy. Stop taking preventative antibiotics because you ruin your entire digestive tract, and it’s not helping in the long run. It may prevent further inflammation, but you are likely already resistant due to today’s general overuse.
You can prevent kidney failure, and – I don’t use the word cure comfortably – you can reverse the effects of urinary tract infection by just eating healthy choices. Within 10 days, you can reduce inflammation and reverse most of the stones (except struvite). You have the ability with food to dissolve the stones. We have more than medicine available. If they are too large, it needs to be zapped. We have a laser solution. You can get rid of them. But when it comes to food before, during, and after recovery, please start being smart about what you put into your system.
I see people sitting outside the doctor’s office smoking, eating chips, drinking a soda, and telling me they are here for kidney stones – my compassionate mind thinks, I hope it hurts!
As a teenager, a wise monk told me not to voice the thoughts that flicker to mind when first confronted with stupid behavior…
I have learned since that etiquette is always a better choice.
TCMchef Raphael