What are kidney stones?
Kidney stones are a mass of minerals that form in the kidneys. They are tiny but mighty crystals, causing sharp pain.
Calcium oxalate kidney stones are the most common. They make up 70-80% of all kidney stones. Just like it sounds, calcium and oxalates combine to form these painful crystals in the kidneys, where urine is produced. They can pass through the urine, but it isn’t without a fair amount of agony.
What are oxalates?
Oxalates are organic compounds found in many plants. For many people, they do not cause problems. For those prone to kidney stones or even candida, oxalates can be problematic.
What leads to calcium oxalate kidney stones?
Eating a salt heavy diet increases the calcium in your kidneys, which will bind to oxalates and produce kidney stones. Excess salt in the diet comes from items like canned foods, condiments, fast food, and preserved meats. Focusing on a diet filled with fresh or frozen fruits, vegetables, and meats is going to be ideal.
Eating plenty of colorful vegetables and a couple servings of fruit per day is a great way to get nutrient dense foods in the diet, but not all are created equal when it comes to kidney stones. Some of the foods that contain the highest amounts of oxalates are spinach, rhubarb, rice bran, buckwheat groats, beets, chocolate, potatoes, almonds, and soy.
It would be impossible and unadvisable to completely avoid oxalates, but most of us eat similar foods week to week. Are you making a smoothie multiple days per week that contains a cup of spinach? One cup raw or half a cup of cooked spinach contains 755 mg oxalates. That’s a ton of oxalates! Are you eating almonds everyday as an afternoon snack? 22 almonds contain about 122 mg oxalates. A medium potato contains 97 mg of oxalates. We can see how these add up throughout the day!
A low oxalate diet should contain less than 100 mg oxalates per day. A typical diet contains roughly 200-300 mg oxalates per day.
What else can be done to eliminate some of the oxalates? Calcium!
Why would we want to eat calcium rich foods like cheese or take a calcium supplement with our oxalate-containing foods? This seems like it would just contribute to kidney stones. The truth is, having them combined at a meal encourages them to bind to each other in the stomach and intestines before reaching the kidneys, greatly reducing the formation of calcium oxalate kidney stones. This is super helpful as many oxalate-rich foods are very healthy and if we restricted all of them, our diet would be bland and less nutrient dense.
What other supplement should we be mindful of? Vitamin C!
Vitamin C rich foods such as citrus fruits, strawberries, and bell peppers can be great for our health. However, we do not want to over supplement with vitamin C if prone to this type of kidney stones as vitamin C metabolizes into oxalates. A daily multivitamin can include a basic dose of vitamin C for maintaining healthy levels in the body. Often we want to add a mega dose of vitamin C to boost our immunity when we feel a cold coming on. But if you are prone to kidney stones this practice can contribute to high oxalates in the body and lead to the formation of these crystal-like stones.
Let’s review a few steps to take to help avoid calcium oxalate kidney stones:
- Drink plenty of water. This encourages your body to flush out minerals so kidney stones can’t begin forming. Have a goal of drinking half of your body weight in ounces of water daily. For example, a person weighing 150 would drink at least 75 oz of water daily.
- Limit added salt, which leads to greater amounts of calcium in the kidneys.
- Reduce high oxalate foods, especially spinach.
- Take a supplement like calcium citrate or eat calcium-rich foods like cheese with your meals. Even 2 oz of mozzarella cheese on a salad adds 400 mg of calcium!
- Do not take high amounts of vitamin C, which can be converted into oxalates.
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